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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stop

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Christian Seger.

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Speaker 1: If anybody out there has listened to the show before,

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Speaker 1: you know that both Robert and I and Joe are

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Speaker 1: HP Lovecraft readers. Uh. And so when we're doing an

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Speaker 1: episode about dreams, of course the dream Lands came up,

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Speaker 1: which is a sort of part of Lovecraft's mythos, right,

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Speaker 1: we all immediately thought the dream Lands. Yeah, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean it's a it's a fabulous tale. You've never read it,

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Speaker 1: The dream Quest of Unknown Cadet being the central, the

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Speaker 1: most famous of his dream related tales, and it involves

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Speaker 1: a master dreamer who sets out across the dream Land

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Speaker 1: in search of this ideal city that he just glimpses

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Speaker 1: once and it's like the dream domain of God's that

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Speaker 1: has been stolen from him. And so he goes on

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Speaker 1: this just epic, sprawling quest that takes him from just

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Speaker 1: one crazy location to another, from encounters with all sorts

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Speaker 1: of creatures that ranged from surprisingly cute for a Lovecraft episode, uh,

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Speaker 1: to just of course monstrously alien and horrific. Yeah. He

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Speaker 1: had like a couple of different short stories. I haven't

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Speaker 1: read a ton of the Dreamland stuff, to be honest

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Speaker 1: with you, but there's a couple of ones that sort

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Speaker 1: of map out this like it's it's almost like a

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Speaker 1: continent in in Lovecrafts mythos rights, Like there's the plateau

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Speaker 1: of Lang and katof and then uh, all Far, isn't

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Speaker 1: there one called like the Cats of all Far? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: And they feature into cat into Kadoth as well. Really

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Speaker 1: he goes through there, Yeah that the cats are super cute,

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Speaker 1: and also the goblins that the cats that end up eating.

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Speaker 1: They're not called goblins, but yeah, they're essentially goblins. Okay. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so you know we're going to talk about dreams, but

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Speaker 1: you know what better, what better dreamer to start with?

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Speaker 1: Randolph Carter. Yeah. The the other big dreamer that always

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Speaker 1: comes to mind when I think about just the power

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Speaker 1: of dreams and the mystery of dreams is of course

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Speaker 1: u Borges you're forays. Uh, it's particularly his tale The

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Speaker 1: Circular Ruins. Yeah, you mentioned this one to me and

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Speaker 1: I had to go look it up and I read

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Speaker 1: it like probably ten of maybe fifteen years ago, but

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Speaker 1: I definitely read it and it's one of those ones

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Speaker 1: that like I barely remember, you know, sort of because

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Speaker 1: a lot of the short story collection Labyrinths sort of

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Speaker 1: just all merges into a lot of stories about maces

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Speaker 1: and labyrinths like that. Yeah, well it's this one is

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Speaker 1: one that I think some of his tales are, you know,

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Speaker 1: more like B sides, I think, but this is definitely

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Speaker 1: a hit single, So it's a It's about a particularly

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Speaker 1: adept dreamer who creates a tool pot within a dream,

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Speaker 1: like a thought construct he's trying to make real to

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Speaker 1: quote to quote the story, he wanted to dream a man.

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Speaker 1: He wanted to dream him in minute entirety and impose

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Speaker 1: him on reality. Uh. And it's super short. I'm not

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Speaker 1: gonna spoil it because you should go read it the

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Speaker 1: second you're done with this podcast episode. But it's just really,

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Speaker 1: really beautiful in mind blowing. This reminds me of yet

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Speaker 1: another stuff to blow your mind author that we keep

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Speaker 1: circling around, Graham Morrison, because tulpa's and dream states come

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Speaker 1: up a lot in his work. Especially. It reminded me

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Speaker 1: um tulpas are huge in his run on the X Men,

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Speaker 1: And I don't know if you've read that yet, but

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Speaker 1: I have not read. I didn't even men. I think

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Speaker 1: you'd enjoy it. There's some crazy stuff with Professor X

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Speaker 1: and Tulpa's and dreams and everything is really good. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because one of the things you see, I think you

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Speaker 1: see in in fiction, in literature and movies and TV.

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Speaker 1: Everyone uses dreams, you know, but not everyone who uses

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Speaker 1: dreams uses them with with elegance and uses them in

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Speaker 1: a in a way that that that really is anything

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Speaker 1: other than just a way to push the narrative along. So,

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Speaker 1: speaking of narratives and dreams, this week's episodes are actually

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Speaker 1: sponsored by Falling Water, which is a new show that's

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Speaker 1: coming out on October three from the USA Network. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they approached us, they said, hey, we want to sponsor

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Speaker 1: a couple of episodes that deal with dreams. We've covered

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Speaker 1: dreams before and continue to cover dreams, so it seemed

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Speaker 1: like a perfect matchup. Yeah. So what's their show about. Well,

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Speaker 1: we'll talk about it a little bit in our sponsored breaks.

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Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil too much for you. It

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Speaker 1: hasn't aired yet, but it's a sci fi mystery that's

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Speaker 1: essentially about entering other people's dreams. This episode that you're

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Speaker 1: listening to is going to be about Frederick Van Eden

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Speaker 1: and his nine types of dreams that he came up with,

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Speaker 1: as well as we're going to cover the gamut of

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Speaker 1: lucid dreaming and Stephen Lebert, who's sort of like the

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Speaker 1: modern day I guess expert on this, and the USA

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Speaker 1: Network put us in touch with Dr Moran Seraph so

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Speaker 1: you'll hear an interview at the end of this episode

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Speaker 1: where we talk to him. He's a modern neuroscientists. He's

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Speaker 1: been a couple of our contemporary podcast peers, and we're

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Speaker 1: gonna talk to him at the end of the of

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Speaker 1: each of these episodes. He's got some stuff to bring

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Speaker 1: to light on these subjects. All right. With all that

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Speaker 1: out of the way, we're gonna dive into the content here,

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Speaker 1: into the episode itself. And just as Bores and Lovecraft,

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Speaker 1: we're both mappers of the dream world as well. Uh,

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Speaker 1: Frederick van Eeden definitely did his part to help us

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Speaker 1: create a map of the dream world, so a classification system,

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Speaker 1: his his own personal classification system for what dreams consists of.

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Speaker 1: So Van Eden, it's it's actually like if you go

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Speaker 1: searching for stuff on him, it's kind of tough to find,

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Speaker 1: but the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia has a very short entry

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Speaker 1: on him, and it essentially says that he was a

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Speaker 1: Dutch novelist and poet, but he was also a practicing physician.

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Speaker 1: He and he founded a cooperative farm colony. His work

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Speaker 1: seems to mainly be steeped in deep mysticism, as the

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Speaker 1: encyclopedia called it, and you'll probably see a little bit

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Speaker 1: of that as we go along here. But I was

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Speaker 1: I found it surprisingly no pun intended lucid as we

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Speaker 1: went through these different dreams. He was alive from eighteen

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Speaker 1: sixty to nineteen thirty two, and as alluded earlier, he

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Speaker 1: is the person who coined the term lucid dreaming as

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Speaker 1: one of these nine types of dreams. Yeah, he I

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Speaker 1: looked into a little more. He very interesting guy, he was.

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Speaker 1: He was interested in politics and Indian philosophy. He translated

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Speaker 1: Bengaloi poet Raban Dara Tagore's Getting Jolly into Dutch. He

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Speaker 1: wrote a number of novels and and some of them

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Speaker 1: are available in English translation if you look them up,

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Speaker 1: and you can. The kindle a versions especially range from

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Speaker 1: free to a couple of dollars because they're past the copyright.

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Speaker 1: And he wrote a novel title The Bride of Dreams.

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Speaker 1: And in this one a man has two wives, one

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Speaker 1: in the waking world and one in the dream world,

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Speaker 1: but he only truly loves the dream bride. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: got the impression that that book, Bride of Dreams, was

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Speaker 1: heavily influenced by the sort of more grounded, fact based

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Speaker 1: nonfiction stuff we're gonna talk about today. Yeah. In some

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Speaker 1: of the books that I was looking at of his,

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Speaker 1: you definitely see recurring elements from the Dreams. Um. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And in these books, uh, I see them popping up

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Speaker 1: on lifts of some of the best Dutch language novels

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Speaker 1: of all time. I'm he was apparently part of the

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Speaker 1: Dutch literary movement known as the talk Tigers or the

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Speaker 1: movement of the eight and uh, yeah, he had he

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Speaker 1: had a movie called The Quest, which is kind of

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Speaker 1: a dream quest you kind of a thing. And then

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Speaker 1: he also wrote one I think our listeners will particularly

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Speaker 1: like this titled from the Cold Pools of Death or

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Speaker 1: in Dutch Vanda Kola Merran Death Dudes. So Van Eden

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Speaker 1: tracked all of his dreams in a journal and what

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Speaker 1: I mean a lot like And he refers to this

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Speaker 1: in this piece that we're going to be heavily referencing

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Speaker 1: throughout the rest of the episode. It's a paper he

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Speaker 1: wrote with the hope of engaging with the Society of

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Speaker 1: Psychical Research, and it's called the Study of Dreams. Now,

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Speaker 1: this was he referred to it as a preliminary look

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Speaker 1: at the work that he hoped to engage more in

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Speaker 1: for the rest of his career. Now this is sort

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Speaker 1: of like the boiled down, condensed version of it. But

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Speaker 1: like we said, dreams and the idea of like how

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Speaker 1: they fit into both our physical bodies and our culture

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Speaker 1: was a major topic for him, both in nonfiction and fiction. Indeed,

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Speaker 1: So before we really launch into his classifications, I'm just

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Speaker 1: gonna do a quick, super fast refresh on phases of

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Speaker 1: sleep and how this dreaming actually like occurs chronologically. Okay,

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Speaker 1: So you have two main phases of sleep. You have

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Speaker 1: non rapid eye movement or in R E M sleep,

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Speaker 1: also known as quiet sleep, and you have rapid eye

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Speaker 1: movement or r E M sleep, also known as active sleep.

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Speaker 1: So you have stage one five to ten minutes right

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Speaker 1: into your sleep, first five to ten minutes it's just

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Speaker 1: light sleep waking sleeping transition period. In stage two twenty minutes,

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Speaker 1: the brain begins to produce bursts of rapid rhythmic brainwave

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Speaker 1: activity known as sleep spindles, and these play an important

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Speaker 1: role in memory consolidation during sleep, which is something we

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Speaker 1: talk about with Dr Saraph at the end of the episode. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And then there's stage three, which is listed here is

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Speaker 1: the delta sleep or slow wave of sleep. That's when

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Speaker 1: the deep slow brain waves known as delta waves again

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Speaker 1: to emerge. And then stage four is about ninety minutes

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Speaker 1: after you fall asleep. This is R. E. M sleep,

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Speaker 1: which most of us are familiar with, and it is

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Speaker 1: the domain of dreams of course. So what kind of

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Speaker 1: dreams though, Well, this episode is Van Eden's Nine dream Worlds,

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Speaker 1: So there's all kinds of dreams, right, We've all had them.

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Speaker 1: He kind of came up with this classification system, and Uh,

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Speaker 1: I think it's interesting to look at, especially today, like

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Speaker 1: almost a hundred years later, like how well this lines

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Speaker 1: up with our our current ideas of dreams, what they mean,

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Speaker 1: what their impact is on our lives. And then we'll

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Speaker 1: talk a little bit more about the science of them

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Speaker 1: currently after that. Yeah, it's it's great. It's great to

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Speaker 1: look at these and and think, all right, this is

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Speaker 1: a guy coming up with all these these terms, and

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Speaker 1: he's he's doing all this, you know, ahead of all

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Speaker 1: the science. But a lot of times the science lines

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Speaker 1: up fairly nicely with his classification system. Yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: so too. So let's get started. What's type one? TI

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Speaker 1: one is the initial dream, and to quote Van Eden,

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Speaker 1: it occurs only in the very beginning of sleep, when

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Speaker 1: the body is in a normal, healthy condition but very tired.

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Speaker 1: The transition from waking to sleep takes place with hardly

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Speaker 1: a moment of what is generally called unconsciousness, but what

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Speaker 1: I would prefer to call discontinuity of memory. Okay, Now,

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Speaker 1: he said that this type is very rare, and that

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Speaker 1: the difference between it and what we now call well,

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Speaker 1: I guess they called them that then, to hypnagogic hallucinations

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Speaker 1: is that the latter has full body perception, while in

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Speaker 1: initial dreams he's he's talking mainly about his own subjective experience.

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Speaker 1: He knows he's asleep, but he has no perception of

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Speaker 1: his body whatsoever. Right, And I think we need to

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Speaker 1: unpack that a little bit so hip hypnogogic and hypno popic. Okay,

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Speaker 1: falling asleep and waking states respectively. All right. The idea

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Speaker 1: here is that these are highly susceptible to hallucination. In

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Speaker 1: the former, your descending the descending rational mind tries to

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Speaker 1: make sense of nonlinear dream images, and in the later

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Speaker 1: emerging the emerging dream mind tries to make sense of

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Speaker 1: real world sights and sounds in the surrounding environment. So

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Speaker 1: it's like there's a little twilight period between dream and

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Speaker 1: real life on either end. I like that. That's a

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Speaker 1: nice metaphor and stuff. Can you can get confused in

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Speaker 1: those times. I think the best example of this um

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Speaker 1: that I assume that most people have experienced is you're

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Speaker 1: reading a book as you're going to sleep, and has

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Speaker 1: anyone else done this as well? You're you're reading it,

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Speaker 1: and then the last two pages even or at least

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Speaker 1: a couple of paragraphs you read before you go to bed,

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Speaker 1: You're reading things that are not on the page, like you.

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Speaker 1: I find myself doing that. I'm pushing forward. I really

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Speaker 1: should go to sleep, and I'm reading. I'm reading and

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Speaker 1: interaizes I'm not reading actual words anymore. I'm reading something

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Speaker 1: that's not on the page because I'm already drifting into dream.

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Speaker 1: I do that too. Yeah, And what I usually end

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Speaker 1: up doing is I'll read those two pages and then

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Speaker 1: I'll be like, I didn't I didn't get any information.

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Speaker 1: Know that. I think it's probably time to go to bed,

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Speaker 1: put it to the side, flip two pages back and

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Speaker 1: put it to the side, and go to bed. Yeah yeah, yeah, So, uh,

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Speaker 1: what do we know today about this? I I would

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Speaker 1: argue that it sounds stunds like he's still talking about

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Speaker 1: hypnagogic hallucination, though perhaps it's more of a closed eye

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Speaker 1: hallucination of one intendant on falling to sleep, rather than

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Speaker 1: one who is reading on and attempting to avoid sleep

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Speaker 1: and finish a chapter in a book. Yeah. That's just

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Speaker 1: my two cents on it. But I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of what he's talking about here does sound a lot

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Speaker 1: like hypnagoguic. The hallucination now type two he refers to

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Speaker 1: as pathological dreams. And the more I read about this,

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Speaker 1: the more I realized that this is something I'd actually

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Speaker 1: covered for our sister show, brain Stuff. I had written

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Speaker 1: an episode of brain Stuff about um whether why when

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Speaker 1: you eat spicy food, and you go to sleep, you

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Speaker 1: have nightmares. Um, so let's let's line up with what

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Speaker 1: van Eden had in mind, and then maybe I'll try

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Speaker 1: to bring some of stuff into it. All right, So

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Speaker 1: he he believed that bodily conditions only rarely influenced dreams.

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Speaker 1: So ebonez are scroogees whole, You're just a potato jab

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Speaker 1: at at Marley's ghost. You know, probably wouldn't have really

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Speaker 1: resonated with van Eden. He's seeing the pathological dreams are

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Speaker 1: the rarity due to fever, indigestion, or perhaps a poison

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Speaker 1: like that, they're not as common as ones just kind

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Speaker 1: of casually throws that out there, or some poison. And

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Speaker 1: I think maybe he's just referring to like like toxins

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Speaker 1: from like from food or drink or something like that

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Speaker 1: more than actual Like it's not like he's actually drinking poison.

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Speaker 1: But maybe maybe it could be that. I don't Yeah, Ie,

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Speaker 1: people were poisoning each other a lot more back then. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I haven't found a lot of follow up on how

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Speaker 1: poisons affect dreams, though I would love to hear. Now

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Speaker 1: I will say this, Yeah, I medications, and you can

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Speaker 1: sort of say medications are poisons, they're in controlled amounts.

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Speaker 1: I have heard of specific malarium at a pations that

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Speaker 1: can cause really intense dreams, So you could you could

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Speaker 1: say that that would be an example of pathological dreaming.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, sure, And I know from other research to

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Speaker 1: that like s s are I medication significantly influences people's dreams, right.

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Speaker 1: Any of course, you mentioned fever and that that is

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Speaker 1: a big one to fever. Dreams are real though It's interesting,

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Speaker 1: it's less cut and dried than you might think. So

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Speaker 1: temperature is out of whack during a fever. People lose

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Speaker 1: some of the ability to regulate their body temperature during

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Speaker 1: r a M sleep, so abnormally hot or cold temperatures

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Speaker 1: in the environment can disrupt that stage of sleep. So

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Speaker 1: a fever patient might experience more r M sleep. But

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Speaker 1: it's also just as likely that the fever is causing

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Speaker 1: frequent wake ups and then faster re entries into ARI

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Speaker 1: M sleep thereafter. So it's just a man matter of

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Speaker 1: I'm remembering more of my dreams because I'm waking up

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Speaker 1: from them. Yeah, so he thought, like as we just said,

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Speaker 1: like that thieves were caused by it is some mainly

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Speaker 1: indigestion or fever some something external. He uses it to

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Speaker 1: define that what he thinks of as true dreams are

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Speaker 1: those dreams where bodily sensations don't penetrate the mind directly.

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Speaker 1: So pathological dreams to him are not true dreams. Now,

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Speaker 1: I mentioned that episode that I wrote for brain Stuff. Basically,

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Speaker 1: the idea here is when you most of us know this.

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Speaker 1: If you eat excessive rich foods, they cause you physical

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Speaker 1: discomfort while you're sleeping, and any discomfort like this can

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Speaker 1: lead to bad dreams, whether it's because you ate like

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Speaker 1: a whole pizza by yourself, or drank too much or whatever.

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Speaker 1: Right like, your your physical body the discomfort that it's

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Speaker 1: feeling translates into the dreams. Now Van Eden would say,

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Speaker 1: that's not a true dream. But late night snacks actually

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Speaker 1: increase your body's metabolism and temperature. Like you're talking about earlier,

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Speaker 1: the idea of a fever affecting you here, this makes

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Speaker 1: you hot and sweaty. Seven out of ten people who

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Speaker 1: eat junk food before better more likely to have nightmares.

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Speaker 1: High levels of sugar may also contribute to sleep discomfort,

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Speaker 1: which maybe why I didn't sleep very well last night.

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Speaker 1: I stupidly drank a sweet tea right before I went

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Speaker 1: to bed, and then like woke up at one in

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Speaker 1: the morning and was awake for two hours. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: also we had a bomb scare on myself. Yeah did

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Speaker 1: you not know about that? I didn't know about that.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a there. Somebody found a

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Speaker 1: suspicious package and the cops and helicopters were all out

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. Interesting. So when you

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Speaker 1: were up doing this, yeah, I know, joke had a

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Speaker 1: dream that you were hiding mutant babies in the toilets

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Speaker 1: of a like a dystopian apartment building. I think there's

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Speaker 1: a connection there somewhere, but it might be in the

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Speaker 1: collective unconscious. But we'll talk about in the next episode.

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Speaker 1: But maybe we should try to figure out what type

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Speaker 1: of dream you had. It doesn't sound like an initial

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Speaker 1: dream or a pathological dream unless you ate some spicy food. No,

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Speaker 1: um no. I think this one might just be an

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Speaker 1: ordinary dream, which is indeed the type three here from Vanden.

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Speaker 1: He says, this is quote that state we're in bodily

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Speaker 1: sensations VI. The visceral, internal or peripheral cannot penetrate to

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Speaker 1: the mind directly, but only in the physical, nonspatial form

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Speaker 1: of a symbol or an image. So this is in

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Speaker 1: the dream world. Uh, nothing else is messing with it. Now.

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Speaker 1: One of the things that he hits a lot in this, uh,

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Speaker 1: in this article that he wrote, is that he took

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Speaker 1: great issue with the conscious unconscious distinction in defining dreams. Yeah. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: this piece in particular, you can tell that he he

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Speaker 1: was a contemporary of Freud, and he was kind of

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Speaker 1: what's the word, like, bristling at some of Freud's theories. Yeah, indeed.

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Speaker 1: And but you know, I kind of side with van

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Speaker 1: Eeden here because when you think about it, it makes sense.

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Speaker 1: While there are certainly phases of sleep that may be

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Speaker 1: devoid of conscious activity, can we really say that an

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Speaker 1: intense dream or nightmare is an unconscious experience, Like it

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Speaker 1: seems like a form of consciousness. Um, So I kind

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Speaker 1: of side with his interpretation there. Well, here's two quotes

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Speaker 1: from him specifically about this. The first he says, the

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Speaker 1: dream is more or less complete reintegration of the psyche,

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Speaker 1: a reintegration in a different sphere, in a physical, nonspatial

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Speaker 1: mode of existence. This reintegration may go so far as

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Speaker 1: to affect full recollection of daylife, reflection and voluntary action

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Speaker 1: on reflection. Then he goes on to say, the true

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Speaker 1: conditions of daylife, daylife is being awake, are not remembered.

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Speaker 1: False remembrance par amnesia is very common in them. They

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Speaker 1: are absurd and confused and leave very faint traces after

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Speaker 1: waking up. So basically he thought these were the majority

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Speaker 1: of people's dreams, and he mainly thought that they were

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Speaker 1: about disassociation and imperfect reintegration. He actually likened it to insanity.

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Speaker 1: He thought, well, this must be what being insane is like,

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Speaker 1: is constantly having these kind of dreams. All right, So

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Speaker 1: how does all the stack up with where we stand today? Well,

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Speaker 1: there are basically basically two major schools of thoughts on dreams. Uh.

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Speaker 1: You can certainly break those down into I think about

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Speaker 1: five separate categories and maybe even more if you really

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Speaker 1: start digging into into individual theories. But it's basically the

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Speaker 1: idea that dreams are only physiological stimulations or the idea

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Speaker 1: that dreams are psychologically necessary. And if they're necessary, then

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Speaker 1: the theories range from them being like really necessary to

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Speaker 1: just like kind of a mild importance. Um, it's either

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Speaker 1: the byproduct of the sleeping brain, or it's a necessary

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Speaker 1: action uh and and on the later possibility. The theories

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Speaker 1: range from the purely neuroscientific to borderline mystical possibilities random

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Speaker 1: neural firings problem solving a cleansing action that's not unlike

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Speaker 1: defragmentation of a computer hard drive. A popular theory in

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Speaker 1: recent years proposes that sleep allows us to reorganize connections

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Speaker 1: and prune synapses. And these are the connections between brain cells.

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Speaker 1: So in this the dream world would protect the brain

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Speaker 1: against toxicity and and other synaptic overload problems by simply

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Speaker 1: pruning the synaxes. And this is another thing that we

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Speaker 1: talked to Dr Surf about. All these different ideas of

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Speaker 1: why we have to dream, but the main theory of

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Speaker 1: why we sleep is to give our brain a chance

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Speaker 1: to organize and process information, possibly through dreams. Our brain

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Speaker 1: takes all this sensory stimuli in while while we're awake, right,

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Speaker 1: which is a lot, and decides what to keep and

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Speaker 1: where to file it while we're asleep. In a series

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Speaker 1: of experiments on mice actually showed that the cerebral spinal

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Speaker 1: fluid that was pumped around their brains while they slept

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Speaker 1: was expelling waste and toxic proteins into their livers. So

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Speaker 1: there's actually a physical process to this, uh, at least

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Speaker 1: in mice. We speculate that it's happening in humans as well.

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Speaker 1: By the way, this is an extra little fact that

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Speaker 1: ties in with the unconscious conscious interpretations. People who are

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Speaker 1: under anesthesia or in a coma are not asleep, so

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Speaker 1: they can't they can't be awakened, and they do not

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Speaker 1: produce the complex active brainwave patterns seen in normal sleep.

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Speaker 1: So instead their brainwaves are very slow and very weak,

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Speaker 1: sometimes all but undetectable. So you know, chalk another one

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Speaker 1: up to venny. That is interesting, especially given my experience

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Speaker 1: within anesthesia. Um, although I've heard like stories of people

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Speaker 1: who are in comas and about all these like bizarre

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Speaker 1: dreams that they have, but they may be induced comas.

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Well, I have one, uh experience with anesthesia,

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Speaker 1: and it was just lights out and then I woke

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Speaker 1: up with bloody mouth. That's usually mine. Uh. This is

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Speaker 1: this is a kind of weird story about tell it

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Speaker 1: real quick. When I was in my early twenties, I

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Speaker 1: had a hernia and I had to go in for

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Speaker 1: surgery for it. They gave me anesthesia. Um, the anesthesia

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Speaker 1: was wearing off while they had me next to a

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Speaker 1: very older woman who had just undergone open heart surgery. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and she was just an utter agony. And I just

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Speaker 1: could hear the nurses just constantly coming over and upping

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Speaker 1: her morphine dosage and talking about it really loudly because

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Speaker 1: they thought I was out, and I was like, I

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Speaker 1: couldn't physically move and I wasn't awake, but I was

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Speaker 1: aware of my surroundings. It was it was quite strange. Well,

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Speaker 1: this this makes me think we need to come back

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Speaker 1: and do an episode on anesthesias. Yeah, that would be good.

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Speaker 1: That would be good. Okay, so we're about halfway through

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Speaker 1: van Eden's list of dream worlds. Let's take a quick

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Speaker 1: break and when we come back, we're going to talk

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Speaker 1: about what he refers to as vivid dreams. All right,

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Speaker 1: we're back. So, yeah, it's tight four bid of dreams.

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Speaker 1: This is what vann Eten has to say about the says,

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Speaker 1: these vivid dreams are generally extremely absurd or untrue. Though

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Speaker 1: explicit and well remembered, the mind is entirely disassociated and

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Speaker 1: reintegration is very defective. So he commented that he he

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Speaker 1: tended to define such dreams unpleasant because of their absurdity,

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Speaker 1: and that while many of find meaning in them, there

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Speaker 1: is no true meaning to decipher. And a vivid dream, yeah,

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Speaker 1: he thought of them as being so strong that we

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Speaker 1: would remember every detail painfully. This sounds like his like

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Speaker 1: worst nightmare, worst type of nightmare. He distinguished between these

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Speaker 1: and pathological dreams because these were more absurd and rare

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Speaker 1: for him, at least, though he described them as being

426
00:23:41,720 --> 00:23:46,480
Speaker 1: often nightmarish. So what do we know today? Well, in

427
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:50,080
Speaker 1: this we're back to the former conundrum that we touched

428
00:23:50,119 --> 00:23:53,640
Speaker 1: on in the pathological section. Is the dream vivid? Am

429
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:58,639
Speaker 1: I remembering it because it was crazier, more colorful, colorful, etcetera?

430
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:01,080
Speaker 1: Or did I just wake up at the right point

431
00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 1: to remember it better? Indeed? Am I a more vivid

432
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:06,720
Speaker 1: dream or simply because I place a priority on remembering

433
00:24:06,720 --> 00:24:09,679
Speaker 1: my dream? You know it said that that five minutes

434
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:12,040
Speaker 1: after the end of a dream, we've forgotten fift the

435
00:24:12,119 --> 00:24:15,000
Speaker 1: dreams content. Ten minute minutes later, we've forgotten nine of

436
00:24:15,000 --> 00:24:18,240
Speaker 1: its content. So and being awoken from r E M sleep,

437
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:22,240
Speaker 1: timing yourself to wake shortly after R M sleep immediate

438
00:24:22,280 --> 00:24:25,199
Speaker 1: post waking dream journaling. These have all been linked to

439
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:30,439
Speaker 1: improved dream recall. Yeah, so we'll talk about that a

440
00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:32,280
Speaker 1: little bit more when we get into like the real

441
00:24:32,520 --> 00:24:37,080
Speaker 1: like uh tactics. I guess for improving your lucid dreaming.

442
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:40,560
Speaker 1: That's never personally resonated with me. It's never really been

443
00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:43,359
Speaker 1: something I guess. I kept dream journals a little bit

444
00:24:43,800 --> 00:24:46,680
Speaker 1: for a while, but after a while I just sort

445
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:50,879
Speaker 1: of just accepted the process as is, right, uh, and

446
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:54,120
Speaker 1: just thought to myself, yes, these dreams are interesting, and yes,

447
00:24:54,200 --> 00:24:56,480
Speaker 1: like maybe I'll gather something out of writing them down,

448
00:24:56,560 --> 00:24:59,200
Speaker 1: but I think I'll just let the process play out

449
00:24:59,200 --> 00:25:01,919
Speaker 1: the way that you usually does, in which I forget

450
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:04,000
Speaker 1: what happens later and we'll talk about this later. But

451
00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:07,000
Speaker 1: there's some people, including Francis Crick, who speculate that's what

452
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:08,879
Speaker 1: you're supposed to do because otherwise it could lead to

453
00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:11,760
Speaker 1: mental instability. Yeah. I mean, I have found that when

454
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:14,440
Speaker 1: I bother to either write about the dream that I had,

455
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:17,600
Speaker 1: or talk about it, or even in some cases like

456
00:25:17,640 --> 00:25:20,240
Speaker 1: just think over it a little bit in anticipation of

457
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:23,080
Speaker 1: talking to someone about it, I will I will actually

458
00:25:23,080 --> 00:25:25,400
Speaker 1: remember more of it. And of course if you want

459
00:25:25,400 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 1: to get into the problems of memory, than perhaps I'm

460
00:25:28,000 --> 00:25:32,879
Speaker 1: also recoding the dreams and making the dream conform to

461
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:36,840
Speaker 1: more of a narrative structure. So it's a little complicated

462
00:25:36,880 --> 00:25:39,480
Speaker 1: in there. But I tend to personally agree with the

463
00:25:39,520 --> 00:25:42,439
Speaker 1: idea that, yeah, if if I just let the dream remain,

464
00:25:42,560 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: it's going to rot away into nothing. But if I

465
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:46,359
Speaker 1: take it out and I give it a little tender

466
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:48,960
Speaker 1: love and care, then it stays with me and probably

467
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:52,560
Speaker 1: transforms into a new shape. Well, I wonder how that

468
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:56,720
Speaker 1: leads into then symbolic dreams, which is his next or

469
00:25:56,760 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 1: he also calls them mocking dreams. He felt like there

470
00:25:59,800 --> 00:26:02,240
Speaker 1: were his dreams and we're gonna talk about this, that

471
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:05,359
Speaker 1: his dreams were like actively against him at some point.

472
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:08,440
Speaker 1: Uh And but but with the symbolic ones, I mean,

473
00:26:08,600 --> 00:26:10,639
Speaker 1: people spend a lot of time, what the other episode

474
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about, Carl, young people spend a lot

475
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:17,760
Speaker 1: of tri time trying to unpack what their dreams actually mean. Yeah,

476
00:26:18,119 --> 00:26:20,439
Speaker 1: it can be quite an entertaining exercise. That This is

477
00:26:20,440 --> 00:26:22,720
Speaker 1: what Vanny didn't had to say in the fifth type,

478
00:26:22,840 --> 00:26:26,400
Speaker 1: the symbolic or mocking dreams, the characteristic element is one

479
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: which I call demoniacal. I will readily concede at once

480
00:26:31,119 --> 00:26:34,400
Speaker 1: that the real existence of beings whom we may call

481
00:26:34,600 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 1: demons is problematic, and yet men of science fine conception,

482
00:26:38,920 --> 00:26:41,840
Speaker 1: very useful and convenient. So he goes on to describe

483
00:26:41,840 --> 00:26:45,400
Speaker 1: these demons as quote, those phenomena which produce on us

484
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:49,960
Speaker 1: the impression of being invented or arranged by intelligent beings

485
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:55,800
Speaker 1: of a very low moral order. So we're talking erotic, obscene. Yeah,

486
00:26:55,880 --> 00:26:59,920
Speaker 1: he uh, he has. The minute he starts bringing a

487
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:02,159
Speaker 1: demons in this, it gets a little complicated because he

488
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:05,120
Speaker 1: has a very explicit point where he says, look, guys, yeah,

489
00:27:05,160 --> 00:27:08,120
Speaker 1: clearly I don't believe in demons. That would just be absurd,

490
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:12,320
Speaker 1: but it does seem like there's some kind of external

491
00:27:12,400 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 1: force that's not me that's influencing my dreams. I'm gonna

492
00:27:17,040 --> 00:27:20,359
Speaker 1: call it demons. Yeah, he says. Quote to me, the

493
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:24,840
Speaker 1: word subconscious, indicating a thinking entity is just as mysterious,

494
00:27:24,880 --> 00:27:28,719
Speaker 1: just as unscientific, as just as occult is. The word demon,

495
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 1: in my view, is accurate to say only that in

496
00:27:31,680 --> 00:27:34,920
Speaker 1: our dreams we see images and experience events for which

497
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 1: our own mind, our person as we remember it cannot

498
00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:41,720
Speaker 1: be held responsible and which must therefore come from some

499
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:46,160
Speaker 1: unknown source. So one of the things he specifically says

500
00:27:46,160 --> 00:27:49,560
Speaker 1: when he's start trying to discern the difference between, you know,

501
00:27:50,160 --> 00:27:53,439
Speaker 1: popular idea of demons and his idea of demons is

502
00:27:53,480 --> 00:27:56,000
Speaker 1: that it's a phenomenon and produced with the impression of

503
00:27:56,040 --> 00:27:58,960
Speaker 1: being arranged by intelligent beings, as you said, of a

504
00:27:59,000 --> 00:28:02,679
Speaker 1: low moral order, which begs the question, so are do

505
00:28:02,760 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 1: we have thoughts that are being arranged by intelligent beings

506
00:28:06,960 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 1: of a high moral order like that he would call angels.

507
00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:13,399
Speaker 1: I guess it kind of comes down to the old

508
00:28:13,520 --> 00:28:16,120
Speaker 1: like angel on one shoulder, demon on the other, going

509
00:28:16,200 --> 00:28:19,680
Speaker 1: and going into that scenario with the assumption that there's

510
00:28:19,760 --> 00:28:21,639
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a real demon or an angel,

511
00:28:21,720 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 1: that these are just kind of manifestations of the mind.

512
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:27,600
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that would be his interpretation of the demon

513
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:32,040
Speaker 1: as encountered in the dream, like a personified manifestation of

514
00:28:32,359 --> 00:28:36,119
Speaker 1: primal urges. Well, yeah, and then you know, he again

515
00:28:36,160 --> 00:28:38,360
Speaker 1: we talked about how he was a contemporary Freud. He

516
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:41,680
Speaker 1: lines these up the symbolic dreams of being kind of

517
00:28:41,680 --> 00:28:44,880
Speaker 1: what Freud was reporting on at the time. He argues

518
00:28:45,040 --> 00:28:48,000
Speaker 1: that a symbol, though, has to be created by an

519
00:28:48,000 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 1: intelligence and can't be invented by itself. So this is

520
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:54,880
Speaker 1: where he gets into that there's some kind of outside

521
00:28:54,880 --> 00:28:58,240
Speaker 1: intelligence influencing me. He says, well, Freud argues the symbol

522
00:28:58,280 --> 00:29:02,400
Speaker 1: is created by our unconscious that he thinks, we can't

523
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:05,440
Speaker 1: be held responsible for our dreams and they must be

524
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:08,960
Speaker 1: coming from some unknown source outside of us. How do

525
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 1: we interpret that today, Well, there's not a lot of

526
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:14,360
Speaker 1: literature dealing with demons and dreams. Not on the scientific

527
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:17,320
Speaker 1: literature dealing with it. Not enough. Somebody out there gets

528
00:29:17,320 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 1: started on it right a dissertation. But if dreams are

529
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 1: an assemblage of memories and interactions informed by all the

530
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:25,640
Speaker 1: stuff moving through our head, then a certain amount of

531
00:29:25,760 --> 00:29:30,560
Speaker 1: interpretable meaning is perhaps inevitable, and even symbolism humans or

532
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:34,440
Speaker 1: pattern recognition engines always ready to apply symbolism and meaning

533
00:29:34,480 --> 00:29:37,040
Speaker 1: to anything and simply tweak the memory to fit it

534
00:29:37,360 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 1: if need be. According to activation synthesis hypothesis, dreams don't

535
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:44,920
Speaker 1: mean anything. It's just random thoughts and memories, and if

536
00:29:44,960 --> 00:29:47,720
Speaker 1: anything makes sense in the cut up machine of our dreams,

537
00:29:48,200 --> 00:29:51,120
Speaker 1: it's it's just randomness in action. And when then we

538
00:29:51,160 --> 00:29:53,840
Speaker 1: make dream stories out of the random randomness when we

539
00:29:53,880 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 1: wake up, kind of the putting a narrative form on

540
00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:00,200
Speaker 1: things that are just discussing earlier. Yeah, absolutely, I mean,

541
00:30:00,240 --> 00:30:02,959
Speaker 1: like I said earlier that this is we're covering it

542
00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:05,280
Speaker 1: now here because it's important, it's related to ven Eden,

543
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 1: but we're going to really dive deep into it with

544
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:10,360
Speaker 1: the collective unconsciousness episode. So what all this boils down

545
00:30:10,400 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 1: to demon or symbol is that it's just something outside

546
00:30:13,440 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: of ourselves. So there's nothing in science to indicate the

547
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:21,720
Speaker 1: dreams pull from some literal outside brain source. So what

548
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 1: what happened? Mean? How would that even work? Right? But

549
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 1: for implied intellect and intent in dream entities, Well, I

550
00:30:28,200 --> 00:30:30,840
Speaker 1: think that's pretty easy. We have theory of mind as

551
00:30:30,920 --> 00:30:35,480
Speaker 1: humans and an astounding ability to anthropomorphize everything, so and

552
00:30:35,680 --> 00:30:39,120
Speaker 1: according as well to threat simulation theory, dreams are a

553
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,080
Speaker 1: biological defense mechanism that gives us a leg up on

554
00:30:42,240 --> 00:30:46,880
Speaker 1: real life threat encounters by constantly running simulations to prepare us.

555
00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yeah, that's an interesting idea that like your

556
00:30:51,160 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 1: brain and your dreams are sort of like a like

557
00:30:55,400 --> 00:31:01,640
Speaker 1: the danger room, like preparing real life. So like that nerdy.

558
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:04,160
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, no, no, no no, that's that's that's perfect, I think.

559
00:31:04,280 --> 00:31:06,200
Speaker 1: So it's like if you have a dream in which

560
00:31:06,840 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 1: the Juggernaut or Apocalypse is chasing you down a hallway,

561
00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:14,040
Speaker 1: then you know your your your brain is not literally

562
00:31:14,160 --> 00:31:16,840
Speaker 1: preparing you for an encounter with an X man villain.

563
00:31:17,200 --> 00:31:18,840
Speaker 1: But perhaps that is it has to do with like

564
00:31:18,840 --> 00:31:20,760
Speaker 1: a certain amount of fear in your body tying into

565
00:31:20,800 --> 00:31:23,680
Speaker 1: the primal need to flee from something. Yeah, it could be,

566
00:31:23,920 --> 00:31:27,040
Speaker 1: it could be. So all right, he's got nine were

567
00:31:27,080 --> 00:31:33,600
Speaker 1: on six General dream Sensations is number six from van Eden,

568
00:31:33,800 --> 00:31:36,880
Speaker 1: and I have to say, of all of his listed

569
00:31:36,960 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: dreams here, this is my most common type of nightmare. Really,

570
00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:44,000
Speaker 1: it is okay because this is one that I didn't

571
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 1: have much to add on this one. We'll just we'll

572
00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: just get to what van Eden says first. He says,

573
00:31:48,600 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 1: it is not an ordinary dream. There is no vision,

574
00:31:50,800 --> 00:31:53,760
Speaker 1: no imentional event, not even a word or a name.

575
00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 1: But during a long time of deep sleep, the mind

576
00:31:57,120 --> 00:32:01,680
Speaker 1: is continually occupied with one person, one place, one remarkable event,

577
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:06,040
Speaker 1: or even one abstract thought. Yeah. Yeah, I have absolutely

578
00:32:06,080 --> 00:32:08,320
Speaker 1: had lots of dreams, and give me an example. So

579
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:11,080
Speaker 1: I have a real hard time. The one, the one

580
00:32:11,120 --> 00:32:13,440
Speaker 1: that comes to mind the most for me because I

581
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:16,760
Speaker 1: had this nightmare a lot when I was in college. Um,

582
00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:20,400
Speaker 1: I worked as a line cook in a big restaurant

583
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:23,520
Speaker 1: and when orders come up, there's like a little at

584
00:32:23,600 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: least in the nineties, there was this little ticker tape

585
00:32:25,760 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: machine that would spit out like a receipt that had

586
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:30,600
Speaker 1: the order written on it, right, and you would grab them.

587
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 1: You would line them up, and you would prepare each order,

588
00:32:33,120 --> 00:32:36,000
Speaker 1: and I would have these nightmares where it was just

589
00:32:36,200 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 1: all the nightmare was was the ticker tape machine running,

590
00:32:39,880 --> 00:32:42,440
Speaker 1: and it was just running over and over and over again,

591
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:44,440
Speaker 1: and there's nothing I could do to stop it. There

592
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:48,400
Speaker 1: was no there was no external thing, narrative or anything.

593
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,400
Speaker 1: It was just that happening over and over and over again,

594
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 1: and I couldn't stop it. Okay, So maybe this would

595
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 1: cover work dreams. I feel like we've all had these,

596
00:32:57,120 --> 00:33:00,720
Speaker 1: especially for doing something repetitive. Yeah, it's definitely, yeah, exactly

597
00:33:00,720 --> 00:33:03,440
Speaker 1: for me, it's repetitive. Um, yeah, I mean I think

598
00:33:03,480 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 1: about I have I have dreams like that related to

599
00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:09,200
Speaker 1: our work here, Like if I spend a whole day

600
00:33:09,240 --> 00:33:11,640
Speaker 1: like eight or nine hours just doing research on a

601
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:13,560
Speaker 1: topic for a podcast, and then I go to bed

602
00:33:13,800 --> 00:33:17,800
Speaker 1: this happened last night, Like like I'll have a dream

603
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 1: that's kind of me like running through that information, like

604
00:33:21,920 --> 00:33:24,080
Speaker 1: me sitting in front of the screen, just scrolling through

605
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:27,320
Speaker 1: and reading and reading and trying to understand. Uh that's

606
00:33:27,360 --> 00:33:30,040
Speaker 1: sort of my modern version of that. But yeah, yeah,

607
00:33:30,120 --> 00:33:32,680
Speaker 1: I have I had these dreams a lot. Um Well,

608
00:33:32,680 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: the one that I had used to have that might

609
00:33:35,160 --> 00:33:37,760
Speaker 1: relate is that when I was working in newspapers and

610
00:33:37,760 --> 00:33:41,000
Speaker 1: pageinating pages doing a layout. Yeah, I would have dreams

611
00:33:41,040 --> 00:33:44,520
Speaker 1: where I was working on the layout and if but

612
00:33:44,600 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 1: if if I messed up, it was it was because

613
00:33:47,360 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: it would kind of wake up a little bit and

614
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:50,960
Speaker 1: go back to sleep. So I had this impression that

615
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:54,000
Speaker 1: was working on the front page and if I disrupted

616
00:33:54,000 --> 00:33:57,320
Speaker 1: the pillows in the bed, I would disrupt the layout

617
00:33:57,320 --> 00:34:00,520
Speaker 1: of the front page of the newspaper. And in design, yeah, resolutely.

618
00:34:00,920 --> 00:34:03,360
Speaker 1: Oh man, that that brings me back to the days

619
00:34:03,360 --> 00:34:05,880
Speaker 1: when I was laying out magazines and stuff. Yeah. Yeah,

620
00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:08,840
Speaker 1: Ty think typography is like, uh, I don't know what

621
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 1: about it, but it like is a perfect like magnet

622
00:34:12,160 --> 00:34:14,400
Speaker 1: for these type of dreams because if you're plugged into

623
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:19,200
Speaker 1: a a limited like really two dimensional universe or extended

624
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:23,960
Speaker 1: periods of time, uh, and just manipulating it back and forth. Yeah, yeah,

625
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:28,800
Speaker 1: absolutely so. Van Eden says that these for him often

626
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:31,839
Speaker 1: have an elevating or consoling effect, but for some they

627
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 1: are extremely strange or harassing. I'd categorize mine as the latter.

628
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:38,279
Speaker 1: Mine were harassing and are harassing. I still have them.

629
00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:40,600
Speaker 1: I I usually can only shake them off if I

630
00:34:40,680 --> 00:34:45,000
Speaker 1: physically move to another location to sleep. So like, um,

631
00:34:45,040 --> 00:34:47,759
Speaker 1: I when I was a kid, my parents used to

632
00:34:47,840 --> 00:34:50,279
Speaker 1: joke about this a lot. I would literally get out

633
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:52,360
Speaker 1: of bed and go lay down on the floor and

634
00:34:52,400 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 1: bring a blanket with me, um, and I would sleep

635
00:34:55,040 --> 00:34:58,160
Speaker 1: better that way sometimes. And now as an adult, I'll

636
00:34:58,200 --> 00:35:00,000
Speaker 1: get up out of bed and I'll kind of quiet

637
00:35:00,080 --> 00:35:02,239
Speaker 1: le go downstairs and sleep on the couch for like

638
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:06,440
Speaker 1: two or three hours and then come back up. All right.

639
00:35:06,640 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 1: That was type six. Type seven is lucid dreaming. And

640
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:13,360
Speaker 1: of course we'll get into more of this, will unpack

641
00:35:13,440 --> 00:35:16,319
Speaker 1: this one more in a bit, but this is what

642
00:35:16,360 --> 00:35:20,120
Speaker 1: he says. In these lucid dreams, the reintegration of the

643
00:35:20,160 --> 00:35:23,400
Speaker 1: psychic functions is so complete that the sleeper remembers day

644
00:35:23,480 --> 00:35:27,120
Speaker 1: life and his own condition, reaches a state of perfect awareness,

645
00:35:27,280 --> 00:35:30,320
Speaker 1: and is able to direct his attention and to attempt

646
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:33,879
Speaker 1: different acts of free volition. Yeah. One of the things

647
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:36,040
Speaker 1: I was surprised about when reading through this was that

648
00:35:36,080 --> 00:35:39,319
Speaker 1: he connected it to the idea of astral projection. And

649
00:35:39,360 --> 00:35:41,319
Speaker 1: I had never thought of that before. You know, I've

650
00:35:41,360 --> 00:35:45,560
Speaker 1: always just uh experience, I haven't experienced astral projection, but

651
00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:49,400
Speaker 1: like through fiction, you know, usually fantasy or science fiction.

652
00:35:50,080 --> 00:35:52,040
Speaker 1: I've never thought of that, but it makes sense, like

653
00:35:52,120 --> 00:35:55,560
Speaker 1: the idea of lucid dreaming sort of being like you're

654
00:35:55,640 --> 00:35:57,600
Speaker 1: outside of yourself and you're just able to kind of

655
00:35:57,719 --> 00:36:00,440
Speaker 1: roam around. And as as we'll get to a lot

656
00:36:00,440 --> 00:36:03,840
Speaker 1: of people, the main go to for lucid dreaming is flying.

657
00:36:04,360 --> 00:36:06,960
Speaker 1: Like people love the that that should be like on

658
00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:10,239
Speaker 1: all the advertisements for the Lucid Dreaming plan, it's just

659
00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:13,360
Speaker 1: like you want to fly, here you go. Yeah, because

660
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:17,080
Speaker 1: it's like I've also heard accounts of people suddenly becoming giants.

661
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:19,920
Speaker 1: So it's essentially you realize that you can do anything

662
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 1: you want, and then you do like the most godlike

663
00:36:22,640 --> 00:36:25,920
Speaker 1: in human thing possible. It's never. You never hear of

664
00:36:25,920 --> 00:36:28,040
Speaker 1: people I don't see you never do. But you tend

665
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:30,160
Speaker 1: not to hear of people waking up in their dream

666
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 1: and realizing, oh wait, um, I can just go to

667
00:36:33,160 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: the lake or something. It's never something very small and human,

668
00:36:36,280 --> 00:36:39,160
Speaker 1: because you've broken free from the human constraints and it's

669
00:36:39,200 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 1: like superhuman powers. Yeah. So Van Eden actually said of

670
00:36:43,760 --> 00:36:46,080
Speaker 1: you know, like I said, he tracked all of these

671
00:36:46,160 --> 00:36:48,040
Speaker 1: dreams in this journal, and he said three hundred and

672
00:36:48,080 --> 00:36:51,279
Speaker 1: fifty two of the cases he recorded in his journal. Uh,

673
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 1: he had full recollection of his day life while he

674
00:36:54,160 --> 00:36:56,880
Speaker 1: was asleep, but he could act voluntarily, and this to

675
00:36:56,960 --> 00:36:59,719
Speaker 1: him was a lucid dream. He was also so asleep

676
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:02,960
Speaker 1: that he didn't think bodily perceptions were penetrating into his

677
00:37:03,080 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 1: dream perception. So this is sort of this is the

678
00:37:05,840 --> 00:37:09,239
Speaker 1: laying of the groundwork for lucid dreams. And then we'll

679
00:37:09,320 --> 00:37:12,759
Speaker 1: jump forward later on in talk about Stephen Lebert and

680
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:15,400
Speaker 1: sort of the work that he created with really popularized it,

681
00:37:15,440 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 1: I think for our generation. Alright, get excited because type

682
00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:22,239
Speaker 1: eight and the list of an Eden dreams is the

683
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:26,000
Speaker 1: demon dream. He says, quote now, in the demon dreams,

684
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:29,320
Speaker 1: which are always very near before or after the Lucid dreams,

685
00:37:29,480 --> 00:37:33,000
Speaker 1: I undergo similar attacks, but I see the forms, the figures,

686
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 1: the personalities of strange non human beings who are doing it.

687
00:37:36,880 --> 00:37:39,080
Speaker 1: One night, for instance, I saw such a being going

688
00:37:39,120 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 1: before me and soiling everything he touched, such as door

689
00:37:42,680 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: handles and chairs. These beings are always obscene and lascivious

690
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:49,880
Speaker 1: and try to draw me into their acts and doings.

691
00:37:50,080 --> 00:37:53,160
Speaker 1: I love the idea that like getting a door handled

692
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:56,840
Speaker 1: dirty was like the most obscene of acts. I'm just

693
00:37:56,880 --> 00:38:00,560
Speaker 1: imagining that, like just like soiled as in fee Sea. Yeah,

694
00:38:00,719 --> 00:38:03,560
Speaker 1: they just can't everything it touches. It's just smerring with

695
00:38:03,560 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: with with fecal matter. Yeah yeah, So I mean I

696
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:12,160
Speaker 1: think that we can track this. The difference for him

697
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:16,040
Speaker 1: seems to be that in these demon dreams he's actively

698
00:38:16,239 --> 00:38:20,799
Speaker 1: fighting against the demons. Right in his other dreams they're

699
00:38:20,800 --> 00:38:24,760
Speaker 1: merely symbols, And in these what he categorizes as demon dreams,

700
00:38:24,760 --> 00:38:27,920
Speaker 1: he's like he's aware that they are a malevolent presence

701
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:30,600
Speaker 1: and he's against them. Yeah yeah, and these demon dreams

702
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 1: there is a vanquishing of the demon. So it's it's

703
00:38:33,200 --> 00:38:34,800
Speaker 1: kind of like he reminds me a lot of the

704
00:38:35,000 --> 00:38:40,319
Speaker 1: presence of demons and a lot of of Buddhist symbolism

705
00:38:40,640 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 1: Buddhist art where you'll have a a god or a

706
00:38:43,200 --> 00:38:47,200
Speaker 1: general or an important buddhistfa and they're they're crushing a

707
00:38:47,239 --> 00:38:49,920
Speaker 1: demon beneath their heel. You see this in Hindu iconography

708
00:38:49,960 --> 00:38:52,799
Speaker 1: too as well. Or my favorite is you'll see them

709
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:55,919
Speaker 1: seated upon a demon that has been defeated and made

710
00:38:55,920 --> 00:38:59,279
Speaker 1: to to set on all fours like a stool. Yeah,

711
00:38:59,360 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: what better? And indeed, that's that's kind of what's going

712
00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:05,360
Speaker 1: on here. Van Eden is vanquishing the demon and turning

713
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:09,600
Speaker 1: that demon into a footstool. Okay, all right, So what

714
00:39:09,640 --> 00:39:13,320
Speaker 1: do we know today about this one? So these demons

715
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:16,400
Speaker 1: could be I think interpreted as nightmares, perhaps even as

716
00:39:16,520 --> 00:39:19,359
Speaker 1: night tears induced deering, a sleep paralysis, and we'll get

717
00:39:19,600 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 1: into that in a bit. Uh. And again, according to

718
00:39:22,680 --> 00:39:26,279
Speaker 1: threat simulation theory, dreams are a biological defense mechanism, a

719
00:39:26,360 --> 00:39:29,400
Speaker 1: simulation of what kind of trials we might face in life.

720
00:39:29,760 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 1: So in this the demon to be conquered could be

721
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:35,719
Speaker 1: some form some take on awaking threat. So again just

722
00:39:35,760 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 1: another simulation. So if any of you out there have

723
00:39:38,560 --> 00:39:42,160
Speaker 1: seen the documentary the nightmare. It covers this phenomena pretty well.

724
00:39:42,200 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 1: It's the same guy who made Room two thirty seven.

725
00:39:44,760 --> 00:39:48,640
Speaker 1: It's mainly about night terrors and sleep paralysis, but they

726
00:39:49,400 --> 00:39:52,799
Speaker 1: try to sort of fictionalize the events and uh act

727
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:55,399
Speaker 1: them out as it happens, to sort of show people

728
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:58,520
Speaker 1: who don't have this experience what it's like. I have

729
00:39:58,760 --> 00:40:02,400
Speaker 1: had one what Van Eden would describe as a demon

730
00:40:02,600 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: dream that I very strongly remember, so much so that actually,

731
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:08,400
Speaker 1: if people are familiar with my comics work, I've written

732
00:40:08,440 --> 00:40:12,160
Speaker 1: about it in there. Yeah, when I was twelve years old,

733
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:14,799
Speaker 1: my family went on a ski trip and I got

734
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:18,920
Speaker 1: snow blindness during the ski trip I told on the

735
00:40:18,920 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 1: podcast before, but go ahead for anyone hasn't heard it.

736
00:40:22,520 --> 00:40:25,359
Speaker 1: So yeah, So I wasn't wearing my goggles. The light

737
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:29,800
Speaker 1: was reflecting, reflecting off of the snow. It burned my eyes.

738
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:31,960
Speaker 1: I went blind in the middle of the night. I

739
00:40:32,000 --> 00:40:35,880
Speaker 1: woke up and I couldn't see. Everything was black. And

740
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:39,080
Speaker 1: at the time I was in a very strict Southern

741
00:40:39,120 --> 00:40:43,799
Speaker 1: Baptist school in Florida where we were we were just

742
00:40:43,920 --> 00:40:47,160
Speaker 1: pummeled with information about demon possession, and so I was

743
00:40:47,320 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 1: convinced that I had gone blind because there was a

744
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:54,520
Speaker 1: demon in the room and I and I was physically

745
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:57,280
Speaker 1: aware of its presence in the room despite the fact

746
00:40:57,760 --> 00:41:01,279
Speaker 1: that I couldn't see anymore. And this was just I mean,

747
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 1: this event had like a huge impact on my psyche

748
00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 1: as a kid. Uh you know. I woke up the

749
00:41:07,040 --> 00:41:09,800
Speaker 1: next morning and my eyes healed over by a lunchtime,

750
00:41:09,840 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 1: I think, and I could see again and everything, you know,

751
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:14,799
Speaker 1: but it was pretty scary. Yeah, I can only imagine,

752
00:41:15,440 --> 00:41:18,320
Speaker 1: because certainly, I think we all have those childhood We

753
00:41:18,640 --> 00:41:23,280
Speaker 1: don't encounter snowblindness, but we all have childhood dreams childhood

754
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:26,160
Speaker 1: nightmares that you know, they occur early enough that they

755
00:41:26,200 --> 00:41:28,799
Speaker 1: have a profound impact on on you, or at least

756
00:41:28,800 --> 00:41:31,760
Speaker 1: they shake you enough that you never forget that dream. Yeah, totally.

757
00:41:31,840 --> 00:41:34,960
Speaker 1: And like from my experience of having a dream like that,

758
00:41:35,000 --> 00:41:38,400
Speaker 1: even though I was a child, I can absolutely understand

759
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:41,520
Speaker 1: why throughout history people have had dreams like that and

760
00:41:41,560 --> 00:41:44,719
Speaker 1: have been like, oh, demons are real demons, they are

761
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:48,839
Speaker 1: a for real thing. I experienced this alright. Moving on

762
00:41:48,880 --> 00:41:52,200
Speaker 1: to the ninth and final dream form, and that Needen's

763
00:41:52,640 --> 00:41:55,759
Speaker 1: map of the dream world wrong waking up pecause it

764
00:41:55,840 --> 00:41:59,000
Speaker 1: which I think maybe that's a little more elegant in

765
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: the original, but he says, we have the sensation of

766
00:42:03,040 --> 00:42:05,759
Speaker 1: waking up in our ordinary sleeping room, and then we

767
00:42:05,840 --> 00:42:09,000
Speaker 1: began to realize that there's something uncanny around us. We

768
00:42:09,120 --> 00:42:13,040
Speaker 1: see inexplicable movements or hear strange noises, and then we

769
00:42:13,120 --> 00:42:16,319
Speaker 1: know that we are still asleep. So yeah, again in

770
00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 1: this section he delves into the demon thing and he

771
00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:21,360
Speaker 1: thinks that these dreams are pranks that are played on

772
00:42:21,520 --> 00:42:26,359
Speaker 1: him by demons. Uh, and he again his peculiar take

773
00:42:26,440 --> 00:42:30,000
Speaker 1: on demons that doesn't necessarily mean a fallen angel exactly. Yeah.

774
00:42:30,000 --> 00:42:32,520
Speaker 1: He spends a lot of time again saying like he

775
00:42:32,560 --> 00:42:35,560
Speaker 1: actually says, I'm prepared to hear myself accused of superstition,

776
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:39,239
Speaker 1: YadA YadA. I he he says, I know, I know

777
00:42:39,320 --> 00:42:40,840
Speaker 1: that you guys are gonna pick on me for this,

778
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:42,680
Speaker 1: but this is what I'm gonna call it. Then he

779
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:46,239
Speaker 1: says he doesn't believe in the unconscious anymore than he

780
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:48,520
Speaker 1: believes in Santa Claus, which I thought, this is a

781
00:42:48,560 --> 00:42:50,680
Speaker 1: really interesting distinction here, Like he's going to use the

782
00:42:50,760 --> 00:42:54,320
Speaker 1: term demon for a lot of these But then, man,

783
00:42:54,560 --> 00:42:58,200
Speaker 1: he was not fond Freud and so he really drew

784
00:42:58,239 --> 00:43:00,759
Speaker 1: the line there that the uncon just was about as

785
00:43:00,840 --> 00:43:03,919
Speaker 1: real as uh Santa Claus to him. Uh. He also

786
00:43:03,960 --> 00:43:06,640
Speaker 1: distinguishes these dreams as being the ones he wants to

787
00:43:06,719 --> 00:43:10,279
Speaker 1: wake up from really badly. So the highlight of this

788
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: is the dreamer is aware that they're in a dream,

789
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:16,000
Speaker 1: like a lucid dreamer, but they can't wake up. Yeah,

790
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:18,239
Speaker 1: all right, so what do we know today about this?

791
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:23,000
Speaker 1: So there are certainly elements of hypnopompic or waking hallucination here.

792
00:43:23,320 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 1: The emerging dream mind tries to make sense of real

793
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:29,080
Speaker 1: world sites and sounds in the surrounding environment. The hypno

794
00:43:29,200 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 1: pompic state is often accompanied by vivid, lingering imagery. And

795
00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:36,080
Speaker 1: it's the stuff of dreams. So the dreamer's sexual fantasies,

796
00:43:36,160 --> 00:43:38,960
Speaker 1: belief system, pop culture, all that's likely to color the

797
00:43:39,080 --> 00:43:43,240
Speaker 1: visions and sensations that have been ripped from the dream world.

798
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:45,719
Speaker 1: And and I believe that this form of dream that

799
00:43:45,719 --> 00:43:49,280
Speaker 1: he's talking about here certainly seems to entail or potentially

800
00:43:49,320 --> 00:43:53,360
Speaker 1: impale entail sleep paralysis. It's again that condition that factors

801
00:43:53,360 --> 00:43:57,200
Speaker 1: into so many supernatural experiences. The body so on on shutdown,

802
00:43:57,280 --> 00:44:00,759
Speaker 1: but you're waking up into this um half dreaming, half

803
00:44:00,760 --> 00:44:03,479
Speaker 1: alert state, and we'll make sure that we explore sleep

804
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:06,759
Speaker 1: paralysis in greater detail in a future episode. And you

805
00:44:06,880 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 1: actually have done correct me if I'm wrong, but I

806
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:12,000
Speaker 1: remember you did a really great video before I joined

807
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:15,359
Speaker 1: the show about sleep paralysis. Oh yeah, yeah, I did

808
00:44:15,360 --> 00:44:18,160
Speaker 1: do a video about sleep paralysis. So if if you

809
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about it real quickly

810
00:44:20,239 --> 00:44:22,200
Speaker 1: go to that Stuff to Blow your Mind YouTube page,

811
00:44:22,280 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: or or you can find the videos on our site

812
00:44:24,080 --> 00:44:26,960
Speaker 1: to Otherwise, I think you can definitely look forward to

813
00:44:27,239 --> 00:44:33,400
Speaker 1: an October HALLOWEENI episode. Absolutely alright, So let's just really

814
00:44:33,440 --> 00:44:35,319
Speaker 1: dive into the lucid dream. This is the one that

815
00:44:35,360 --> 00:44:39,200
Speaker 1: everybody's interested in, so let's get into it. So lucid dreaming,

816
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 1: I don't personally have a lot of experience with it.

817
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 1: I tend to find I'll have these dreams and they'll

818
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:48,520
Speaker 1: be a potential for like some it would be so

819
00:44:48,600 --> 00:44:52,200
Speaker 1: much cooler if I did go lucid, But instead, I'm

820
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:57,360
Speaker 1: just like sheepishly constrained by my like my waking persona.

821
00:44:57,640 --> 00:44:59,160
Speaker 1: So like I'll be in a dream where like I'm

822
00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:01,200
Speaker 1: standing in line. It's something, you know, it's an example,

823
00:45:02,040 --> 00:45:04,080
Speaker 1: and I keep standing in line. Why am I standing

824
00:45:04,120 --> 00:45:06,359
Speaker 1: in line? If I knew I was dreaming, I could

825
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:08,799
Speaker 1: make that line disappear. Here. You could walk out of

826
00:45:08,800 --> 00:45:10,120
Speaker 1: the line. I could walk out of the line. I

827
00:45:10,120 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 1: could fly, I could do anything. I could. I could

828
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:13,680
Speaker 1: pick two people out of the line to go to

829
00:45:13,719 --> 00:45:15,799
Speaker 1: the beach with me or something. But instead I just

830
00:45:15,840 --> 00:45:19,239
Speaker 1: stay there. I don't go lucid. My first experience with

831
00:45:19,320 --> 00:45:22,200
Speaker 1: the idea of lucid dreaming was again in my early twenties.

832
00:45:22,560 --> 00:45:24,839
Speaker 1: I lived in a house with nine people, and I

833
00:45:24,880 --> 00:45:28,279
Speaker 1: lived in the I lived in the attic, and one

834
00:45:28,320 --> 00:45:32,479
Speaker 1: of my roommates, uh, you know, one day was just like, hey,

835
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:34,360
Speaker 1: he was kind of this like hippie guy who was

836
00:45:34,400 --> 00:45:37,440
Speaker 1: just like really into ideas like this, and he was like,

837
00:45:37,800 --> 00:45:40,239
Speaker 1: I've got this book on lucid dreaming, and I am

838
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:41,839
Speaker 1: just he didn't have a job. He just hung out

839
00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 1: at the house all day practicing lucid dreaming and he

840
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:47,080
Speaker 1: was he was really into it, and he must have

841
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:49,759
Speaker 1: it must have been one of Lebert's books now that

842
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:52,719
Speaker 1: I'm doing the research on this, but he was practicing

843
00:45:52,760 --> 00:45:55,400
Speaker 1: all the techniques and he was just so thrilled with it.

844
00:45:55,440 --> 00:45:58,240
Speaker 1: He really wanted me to know about it because he's like, dude,

845
00:45:58,239 --> 00:46:01,360
Speaker 1: you can fly, you can lie. And I was like, Okay,

846
00:46:01,400 --> 00:46:03,919
Speaker 1: that's cool, but I don't really need to do that,

847
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:06,120
Speaker 1: you know. And I guess like back then, I wasn't

848
00:46:06,160 --> 00:46:09,040
Speaker 1: really thinking about it very consciously, but you know, now

849
00:46:09,040 --> 00:46:11,080
Speaker 1: that we're approaching it here again, like I just don't

850
00:46:11,120 --> 00:46:14,480
Speaker 1: really have that much interest in developing the ability to

851
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:18,680
Speaker 1: dream lucidly. I think because it seems to me like

852
00:46:18,719 --> 00:46:22,319
Speaker 1: the process is doing what it should right and if

853
00:46:22,320 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: my imagination wants me to fly, it'll let me fly.

854
00:46:26,600 --> 00:46:28,799
Speaker 1: This is yeah, this is a common thing that that

855
00:46:28,960 --> 00:46:31,319
Speaker 1: we were both I think, thinking of and researching it.

856
00:46:31,400 --> 00:46:34,040
Speaker 1: And when we speak to a surfa later on, is

857
00:46:34,080 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 1: that in lucid dreaming, are we were breaking the system?

858
00:46:37,040 --> 00:46:39,040
Speaker 1: Is it? Is it kind of like I've hacked the

859
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:42,120
Speaker 1: game to the point where like I've broken the game

860
00:46:42,160 --> 00:46:45,799
Speaker 1: mechanics and I'm not getting the the the ideal experience

861
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: out of it, or I'm like cheating on really good

862
00:46:48,680 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 1: It's like when you add too many mods to a game, right,

863
00:46:52,320 --> 00:46:54,880
Speaker 1: like like it's Skyrim and all of a sudden, the

864
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:57,960
Speaker 1: dragon has macho man Randy Savage's face. You know, it's

865
00:46:57,960 --> 00:47:00,480
Speaker 1: like you can do all that kind of stuff, but

866
00:47:00,680 --> 00:47:03,239
Speaker 1: like at the ultimately, like it's just gonna bog down

867
00:47:03,239 --> 00:47:05,399
Speaker 1: your game. Yeah, Or it's like it's like just going

868
00:47:05,400 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: in playing Doom for the first time and going immediately

869
00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:12,040
Speaker 1: to god mode. Alright, god mode now great, but don't

870
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:19,319
Speaker 1: don't complain to us when you're overall gaming experience. So

871
00:47:20,160 --> 00:47:23,440
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming it this is a real state, and it's

872
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: received a fair amount of study over the over the

873
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:30,719
Speaker 1: years and continuing study. According to Dr Matthew Walker, a

874
00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:34,719
Speaker 1: principal investigator at the Berkeley Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory, he

875
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 1: believes that while the lateral prefrontal cortex, a part of

876
00:47:38,600 --> 00:47:41,160
Speaker 1: the brain that deals with logic, is supposed to be

877
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:45,440
Speaker 1: asleep during r M sleep, it's possible that in lucid dreaming,

878
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 1: this part of the brain is waking up so that

879
00:47:47,640 --> 00:47:51,440
Speaker 1: the dreaming and logic UH systems are both working at

880
00:47:51,440 --> 00:47:54,000
Speaker 1: the same time, and that this is what enables the

881
00:47:54,080 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 1: dreamer to recognize the dream. So it's kind of like

882
00:47:57,040 --> 00:48:01,520
Speaker 1: with sleep paralysis. Um, you're your mind is waking up

883
00:48:01,560 --> 00:48:03,920
Speaker 1: your but your body isn't. There's a mismatch and systems

884
00:48:03,920 --> 00:48:06,120
Speaker 1: coming online are staying offline, and it would be a

885
00:48:06,160 --> 00:48:08,520
Speaker 1: similar thing at play here with Lucid Dreaming. Yeah, I

886
00:48:08,520 --> 00:48:10,919
Speaker 1: think so. Um. One of the things that I read

887
00:48:10,920 --> 00:48:14,400
Speaker 1: about this actually again we did brain Stuff episode on

888
00:48:14,480 --> 00:48:17,520
Speaker 1: Lucid Dreaming. I didn't write that one, but I turned

889
00:48:17,560 --> 00:48:19,080
Speaker 1: to the notes and looking at this, and one of

890
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:21,120
Speaker 1: the things I learned was did you know that Tibetan

891
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:24,600
Speaker 1: Buddhists have been practicing dream yoga that they call milam

892
00:48:24,880 --> 00:48:27,319
Speaker 1: for centuries? Which I thought was really interesting because when

893
00:48:27,320 --> 00:48:30,399
Speaker 1: we get into Little Barge, he does dream yoga. Yeah. Yeah,

894
00:48:30,400 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 1: the dream yoga is very interesting because it also it

895
00:48:33,040 --> 00:48:35,520
Speaker 1: ties into the idea that so in the dream world,

896
00:48:35,760 --> 00:48:38,840
Speaker 1: it's about questioning the nature of your reality and realizing

897
00:48:38,880 --> 00:48:41,160
Speaker 1: that that all of it is an illusion and then

898
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:44,040
Speaker 1: you're free from it. And then the meta version of

899
00:48:44,080 --> 00:48:47,120
Speaker 1: that in uh In in the in Buddhism is to

900
00:48:47,160 --> 00:48:49,799
Speaker 1: realize that the world is an illusion and to wake

901
00:48:49,880 --> 00:48:53,399
Speaker 1: up from that as well. So it makes it makes

902
00:48:53,440 --> 00:48:57,200
Speaker 1: perfect sense. So there's still some scientists that are skeptical

903
00:48:57,239 --> 00:49:00,560
Speaker 1: about it, because even as Robert lude it too earlier

904
00:49:00,560 --> 00:49:02,680
Speaker 1: in this episode, even when people are trying to be

905
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:05,600
Speaker 1: honest about their memories. They can't always succeed because every

906
00:49:05,640 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 1: time we call a memory up, it's an electrochemical pattern

907
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:12,840
Speaker 1: that's in our brain and we're changing it. Some research

908
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:15,680
Speaker 1: even indicates that the harder we try for a perfect

909
00:49:15,719 --> 00:49:18,080
Speaker 1: recall of a memory, the more we're going to change

910
00:49:18,120 --> 00:49:21,279
Speaker 1: that memory. So a lot of scientists are skeptical about it,

911
00:49:21,280 --> 00:49:24,080
Speaker 1: but hey, we have got some great scientists to turn

912
00:49:24,120 --> 00:49:27,520
Speaker 1: to today to talk about it. They're not everybody is skeptical.

913
00:49:28,200 --> 00:49:31,239
Speaker 1: That's right now. Our listeners are probably all over the

914
00:49:31,239 --> 00:49:33,360
Speaker 1: board on this, and we'll probably hear from both sides,

915
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:36,840
Speaker 1: lucid dreamers and people who've never achieved lucidity in their dreams,

916
00:49:37,200 --> 00:49:40,879
Speaker 1: and scientists are unsure exactly why there's this distinction, why

917
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:44,240
Speaker 1: some people are better at lucid dreaming and some require

918
00:49:44,320 --> 00:49:48,200
Speaker 1: much more coaching and help to achieve it. Um one

919
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:50,440
Speaker 1: thing we can say is that a dept lucid dreamers

920
00:49:50,440 --> 00:49:53,120
Speaker 1: are excellent and remembering dreams. They tend to have strong

921
00:49:53,280 --> 00:49:57,839
Speaker 1: visualization and spatial skills. But but this could also tie

922
00:49:57,840 --> 00:49:59,920
Speaker 1: into some of the stuff we're gonna discuss in a

923
00:50:00,000 --> 00:50:01,799
Speaker 1: bit about how to become a better lucid dream or

924
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:06,440
Speaker 1: perhaps they remember because they're journaling, they're they're more engaged

925
00:50:06,520 --> 00:50:08,920
Speaker 1: in the substance of their dreams. Yeah. One of the

926
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:11,279
Speaker 1: sources that I turned to pretty heavily for this was

927
00:50:11,360 --> 00:50:16,480
Speaker 1: an Omni interview with Stephen Lebert uh and at the time,

928
00:50:16,960 --> 00:50:20,440
Speaker 1: Lebert said that surveys indicate that most adults can recall

929
00:50:20,480 --> 00:50:23,759
Speaker 1: at least one lucid dream, one occasion in their life

930
00:50:23,800 --> 00:50:27,120
Speaker 1: where they've had a lucid dream. Roughly one person in

931
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:31,399
Speaker 1: ten has lucid dreams once a month or more. Now

932
00:50:31,440 --> 00:50:35,439
Speaker 1: that's contrary to my experience, and maybe it's just because

933
00:50:35,440 --> 00:50:37,600
Speaker 1: I'm not open to it as well. Like again, like

934
00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:39,960
Speaker 1: maybe if I borrowed that book from my roommate back

935
00:50:39,960 --> 00:50:42,080
Speaker 1: in my twenties and practiced a lot, I would be

936
00:50:42,120 --> 00:50:44,160
Speaker 1: having them more often. Yeah, you would be. You know,

937
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:46,959
Speaker 1: I love this example of the guy because it makes

938
00:50:47,080 --> 00:50:49,520
Speaker 1: it makes it seem like like he was almost addicted

939
00:50:49,560 --> 00:50:54,239
Speaker 1: to lucid dreaming to where his waking life was entirely secondary.

940
00:50:54,320 --> 00:50:56,160
Speaker 1: It's almost like it became a you know, he's like

941
00:50:56,760 --> 00:51:00,120
Speaker 1: a heroin addict um, holding out in an abandoned building,

942
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:04,919
Speaker 1: accepted his his sweet drug is the lucid dream World. Yeah,

943
00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:06,600
Speaker 1: I mean, not to go too far into it, but

944
00:51:06,640 --> 00:51:09,359
Speaker 1: I don't think he was particularly thrilled with his life

945
00:51:09,360 --> 00:51:11,920
Speaker 1: at the time, So yeah, lucid dreaming probably seemed like

946
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:16,200
Speaker 1: a really greatest So one of the key researchers here

947
00:51:16,200 --> 00:51:19,480
Speaker 1: and one of the key areas of research for lucid dreaming,

948
00:51:19,600 --> 00:51:23,719
Speaker 1: is psycho physiologist Stephen Lebrange, and he has up the

949
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:27,600
Speaker 1: Lucidity Institute, which studies lucid dreaming and offers a number

950
00:51:27,640 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 1: of really excellent sounding workshops, not only because they tend

951
00:51:30,960 --> 00:51:35,319
Speaker 1: to happen in Hawaii, right There's that it's based in

952
00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:37,560
Speaker 1: Palo Alto, California, though, and again a lot of the

953
00:51:37,600 --> 00:51:40,080
Speaker 1: information here comes from that interview with him in Omni

954
00:51:40,120 --> 00:51:42,520
Speaker 1: And I gotta say that if you can find that interview,

955
00:51:42,520 --> 00:51:45,200
Speaker 1: it's kind of hilarious because the the author who writes

956
00:51:45,239 --> 00:51:49,000
Speaker 1: it up has a very hilarious description of the people

957
00:51:49,040 --> 00:51:51,480
Speaker 1: who are there and how new age it kind of sounds.

958
00:51:52,239 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 1: But they give a fair shake too. So it was

959
00:51:54,560 --> 00:51:58,360
Speaker 1: founded in nine seven by Liberts. It's a for profit company.

960
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 1: We should be clear about that. The train in Lucid

961
00:52:00,680 --> 00:52:03,879
Speaker 1: Dreaming and sells various information and tools to people for

962
00:52:03,960 --> 00:52:08,560
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming. Lebert, let's be clear, is a Stanford trained scientist.

963
00:52:08,600 --> 00:52:12,360
Speaker 1: He's also an entrepreneur and regarded by some as a guru.

964
00:52:12,520 --> 00:52:17,480
Speaker 1: He refers to his fellow lucid dreamers as on narrow knots,

965
00:52:18,320 --> 00:52:23,000
Speaker 1: which is apparently Latin for dream explorers. And he went

966
00:52:23,040 --> 00:52:26,080
Speaker 1: to grad school for chemistry when he was only nineteen

967
00:52:26,120 --> 00:52:29,279
Speaker 1: years old. Like, he got his undergraduate super fast and mathematics,

968
00:52:29,560 --> 00:52:32,680
Speaker 1: and he was like a you know, child genius basically. Uh.

969
00:52:32,680 --> 00:52:35,200
Speaker 1: But then he also said, look, yeah, I got through

970
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:39,400
Speaker 1: school really quickly. But psychedelics did influence my career. So

971
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:42,480
Speaker 1: I immediately thought, here's another member of the stuff to

972
00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:44,960
Speaker 1: blow your mind. Psychedelic avengerance. Yeah. Yeah, with the more

973
00:52:45,000 --> 00:52:50,319
Speaker 1: modern uh um cast of the crew, I guess absolutely. Uh.

974
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:52,640
Speaker 1: The New York Times did a piece on him in

975
00:52:52,640 --> 00:52:55,719
Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, and uh, this is direct quote

976
00:52:55,719 --> 00:52:58,000
Speaker 1: from it. I thought it was worth reading out. Loud,

977
00:52:58,280 --> 00:53:01,960
Speaker 1: a student at Stanford University, where Dr Lebert's conducted much

978
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 1: of his research, wrote in the Stanford Daily quote, and

979
00:53:05,120 --> 00:53:08,480
Speaker 1: one of my earliest experiences with lucidity, I announced to

980
00:53:08,560 --> 00:53:11,960
Speaker 1: an auditorium full of people that I was their God,

981
00:53:12,360 --> 00:53:15,600
Speaker 1: wasn't I? When they did not respond deferentially, I used

982
00:53:15,640 --> 00:53:18,759
Speaker 1: telekinesis to send one of them flying across the room.

983
00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:23,920
Speaker 1: So it seems like oftentimes the go to for lucid

984
00:53:24,000 --> 00:53:27,480
Speaker 1: dreaming is like superpowers and the superpowers we make up

985
00:53:27,480 --> 00:53:31,359
Speaker 1: in our fiction and mythology, and that makes us more

986
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:36,200
Speaker 1: powerful and more in control. Leberts himself published his Lucid

987
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:38,839
Speaker 1: Dreaming book in nineteen five, as well as a couple

988
00:53:38,840 --> 00:53:42,520
Speaker 1: of follow ups. He compares lucid dreaming to virtual reality,

989
00:53:42,560 --> 00:53:45,960
Speaker 1: and he reminds us that many creative people have found

990
00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:50,320
Speaker 1: their inspiration in dreams. His examples are Samuel Coleridge claiming

991
00:53:50,320 --> 00:53:53,240
Speaker 1: to have composed his poem Kubla Khan in a dream,

992
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:57,960
Speaker 1: and chemist Friedrich k Cool said he discovered the structure

993
00:53:58,360 --> 00:54:01,680
Speaker 1: of Benzene while he was an a dream. U Liberte

994
00:54:01,840 --> 00:54:05,319
Speaker 1: even thinks lucid dreaming can aid people in becoming more

995
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:11,120
Speaker 1: self confident or in learning how to accelerate their healing process. Now,

996
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:14,800
Speaker 1: i I'm the idea of dream instead of using dreams

997
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,399
Speaker 1: to come up with solutions to problems. Uh. We did

998
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:20,359
Speaker 1: an old episode of Stuff to Play Your Mind um

999
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:24,960
Speaker 1: based on focusing on that question. And it's, Uh, it's

1000
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,160
Speaker 1: interesting because on one hand, if you're looking at sleep

1001
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:30,680
Speaker 1: and dreams, it's this problem solving exercise. It makes sense

1002
00:54:30,719 --> 00:54:34,000
Speaker 1: that some solutions would solidify in the course of dreams.

1003
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:37,920
Speaker 1: But you're also getting into that situation of someone waking

1004
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:40,720
Speaker 1: waking up with a dream and and forcing a narrative

1005
00:54:40,719 --> 00:54:43,959
Speaker 1: on it. You're also dealing in some cases with people

1006
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:46,080
Speaker 1: are telling a story. They're trying to tell an entertaining

1007
00:54:46,080 --> 00:54:48,960
Speaker 1: story about how they solved a problem. Even if you're

1008
00:54:48,960 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 1: not particularly religious or or you know a mystic in

1009
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:56,760
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form, there's something super tantalizing about

1010
00:54:56,760 --> 00:54:59,400
Speaker 1: the idea of the answer coming from a dream. It's

1011
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:03,399
Speaker 1: almost like be a secular version of the gods gave

1012
00:55:03,480 --> 00:55:06,560
Speaker 1: me the answer. Yeah, And and so of course, like

1013
00:55:06,680 --> 00:55:09,759
Speaker 1: it's attractive to guys like Stephen Leberts to try to

1014
00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:13,680
Speaker 1: like crack that code, right, trying to figure out how

1015
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:16,080
Speaker 1: that's all working out and how it seems like the

1016
00:55:16,200 --> 00:55:19,279
Speaker 1: key to understanding humanity in a way. Right. But he

1017
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:21,880
Speaker 1: also it's important to note here he can deducts a

1018
00:55:21,960 --> 00:55:25,239
Speaker 1: number of experiments. Uh, he monitors subjects with the e

1019
00:55:25,320 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 1: g S. That's a test of the electrical brain activity

1020
00:55:28,480 --> 00:55:30,880
Speaker 1: that's going on during sleep. And he's found that lucid

1021
00:55:30,920 --> 00:55:35,120
Speaker 1: dreaming does occur during R E M sleep, But again

1022
00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:37,160
Speaker 1: we're not exactly sure what's going on in the brain

1023
00:55:37,239 --> 00:55:40,640
Speaker 1: during all that. Yeah, he's actually the one who proved

1024
00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:43,239
Speaker 1: that lucid dreaming is real. We get into this with

1025
00:55:43,360 --> 00:55:47,239
Speaker 1: Dr Surf later. But Leberts and other lucid dreamers were

1026
00:55:47,280 --> 00:55:50,160
Speaker 1: able to communicate to the working world by means of

1027
00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:53,560
Speaker 1: eye signals, showing that this type of dreaming occurs in

1028
00:55:53,680 --> 00:55:55,839
Speaker 1: R E M sleep. What they do is count off

1029
00:55:55,880 --> 00:55:59,600
Speaker 1: every ten seconds and then signal with their eyes. Previously,

1030
00:55:59,680 --> 00:56:03,680
Speaker 1: sleep researchers thought dreams were naturally devoid of any awareness

1031
00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:06,840
Speaker 1: or control. So his initial study and lucid dreaming was

1032
00:56:06,880 --> 00:56:10,280
Speaker 1: actually inspired by a polygraph test that he read about

1033
00:56:10,320 --> 00:56:13,320
Speaker 1: that showed a subject's eyes going back and forth during

1034
00:56:13,520 --> 00:56:16,600
Speaker 1: R E M. Uh. This and his research seems to

1035
00:56:16,680 --> 00:56:20,200
Speaker 1: point to our eyes moving in real time with what

1036
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:23,600
Speaker 1: we're looking at in a dream. What I love about

1037
00:56:23,640 --> 00:56:25,719
Speaker 1: this test, and I'm sure this was something they had

1038
00:56:25,719 --> 00:56:27,920
Speaker 1: to overcome, is you have to have a lucid dreamer.

1039
00:56:28,239 --> 00:56:30,720
Speaker 1: You're going to somebody who essentially is becoming a god

1040
00:56:30,760 --> 00:56:33,760
Speaker 1: in the dream world, and you're saying, hey, if you could,

1041
00:56:34,239 --> 00:56:36,959
Speaker 1: if you could just stop flying and shooting laser beings

1042
00:56:36,960 --> 00:56:39,480
Speaker 1: out of your eyes and stepping on cities, stop for

1043
00:56:39,520 --> 00:56:41,960
Speaker 1: a second and just move your eyes around a few times.

1044
00:56:42,520 --> 00:56:44,719
Speaker 1: For me on the outside, like, it seems like it's

1045
00:56:44,719 --> 00:56:47,040
Speaker 1: got to take a certain amount of discipline for them

1046
00:56:47,080 --> 00:56:50,480
Speaker 1: to remember to do such a small thing in the

1047
00:56:50,520 --> 00:56:55,480
Speaker 1: world dreams. I mean, his his experiments show that dream activities,

1048
00:56:55,560 --> 00:56:58,800
Speaker 1: whether it's counting like that or it's it's having sex.

1049
00:56:58,840 --> 00:57:00,960
Speaker 1: I'm surprised that more people we don't report on use

1050
00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:04,160
Speaker 1: it lucid, using lucid dreaming to just have various type

1051
00:57:04,200 --> 00:57:08,239
Speaker 1: of sexual scenarios. Maybe it's just not self reporting on that. See,

1052
00:57:08,280 --> 00:57:10,360
Speaker 1: that's one thing I wonder is like, is that something

1053
00:57:10,440 --> 00:57:13,160
Speaker 1: that to the waking individual we think, oh, if I

1054
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:16,120
Speaker 1: could lucid dreaming, it would just be sex every night? Maybe?

1055
00:57:16,320 --> 00:57:19,560
Speaker 1: Or is it is this a thing like you go, lucid,

1056
00:57:19,680 --> 00:57:22,080
Speaker 1: You're not even gonna worry about that all set stuff.

1057
00:57:22,080 --> 00:57:25,640
Speaker 1: You're just gonna float and fly and float exactly. Well,

1058
00:57:25,680 --> 00:57:31,640
Speaker 1: it's the Superman Superman conundrum, right, Why bother worrying about sex? Uh? Yeah,

1059
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:35,960
Speaker 1: they're all evoking the same neural and physiological responses in

1060
00:57:36,080 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 1: real life. Though, whatever you're doing, according to Lebert, in

1061
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:44,080
Speaker 1: your dream, you're physically experiencing. It's sort of the same

1062
00:57:44,120 --> 00:57:47,320
Speaker 1: way in your body in real life. And he you know,

1063
00:57:47,600 --> 00:57:50,320
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into this. He's got all different kinds

1064
00:57:50,320 --> 00:57:53,080
Speaker 1: of ways of trying to induce lucid dreaming. First, he

1065
00:57:53,120 --> 00:57:56,120
Speaker 1: started with tape recorders that whispered this is a dream

1066
00:57:56,200 --> 00:57:59,760
Speaker 1: to you while you're sleeping. He uh. He used vibrating

1067
00:58:00,000 --> 00:58:03,560
Speaker 1: stresses and lights that were mounted inside sleep masks, and

1068
00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:07,120
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about this the He actually uh

1069
00:58:07,320 --> 00:58:10,840
Speaker 1: commercially made these available. They're called the dream Light, and

1070
00:58:10,880 --> 00:58:14,240
Speaker 1: they had infrared sensors that detect eye twitches characteristic of

1071
00:58:14,360 --> 00:58:17,320
Speaker 1: R E M sleep. The device switches on a flashing

1072
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:19,640
Speaker 1: light that serves as a cute or remind you while

1073
00:58:19,680 --> 00:58:23,280
Speaker 1: you're dreaming that you're dreaming without waking you up. Uh,

1074
00:58:23,400 --> 00:58:25,040
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know if you saw this in

1075
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:28,200
Speaker 1: He claimed he sold a thousand of those for a

1076
00:58:28,240 --> 00:58:31,440
Speaker 1: thousand dollars each, so each one was a thousand bucks.

1077
00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:33,280
Speaker 1: And then he was like, you know, let's make this

1078
00:58:33,320 --> 00:58:36,040
Speaker 1: a little bit more broadly available, and that's when he

1079
00:58:36,080 --> 00:58:38,200
Speaker 1: came up with the Nova Dreamer, which I know you

1080
00:58:38,200 --> 00:58:41,280
Speaker 1: have notes about in here too. That was his cheaper alternative,

1081
00:58:41,320 --> 00:58:44,120
Speaker 1: and it was only two hundred and sift seventy five dollars,

1082
00:58:44,720 --> 00:58:47,960
Speaker 1: but it also had auditory accutes, not just the flashing lights.

1083
00:58:47,960 --> 00:58:50,480
Speaker 1: So so the main idea here is if you can detect,

1084
00:58:50,640 --> 00:58:53,520
Speaker 1: or a machine can detect, when you are in R. E.

1085
00:58:53,680 --> 00:58:56,439
Speaker 1: M sleep, when you're dreaming, if you can somehow reach

1086
00:58:56,480 --> 00:58:59,240
Speaker 1: in and tell and inform that person it's dream, then

1087
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:02,520
Speaker 1: they can wake up. Now, another method that is it

1088
00:59:02,600 --> 00:59:05,000
Speaker 1: is practiced, is is and this goes back to the

1089
00:59:05,040 --> 00:59:07,480
Speaker 1: dream yo. Good thing too is if you are always

1090
00:59:07,600 --> 00:59:11,360
Speaker 1: questioning the nature of your reality, you're always essentially asking

1091
00:59:11,400 --> 00:59:13,439
Speaker 1: yourself is this a dream? If you write on your hand,

1092
00:59:13,520 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 1: perhaps in pen is this a dream? If you get

1093
00:59:16,680 --> 00:59:18,400
Speaker 1: in the practice of doing that enough in the waking world,

1094
00:59:18,440 --> 00:59:21,240
Speaker 1: that would carry carry on into the dreaming world, and

1095
00:59:21,280 --> 00:59:24,000
Speaker 1: then you'll be able to wake up. In the uh

1096
00:59:24,080 --> 00:59:26,800
Speaker 1: An inception where they have those what do they call them,

1097
00:59:26,840 --> 00:59:31,440
Speaker 1: each person has like their own little um uh device

1098
00:59:31,680 --> 00:59:34,480
Speaker 1: that they used to test the reality of whether they're

1099
00:59:34,520 --> 00:59:36,880
Speaker 1: dreaming or not. In Leonardo DiCaprio has that top that

1100
00:59:36,920 --> 00:59:40,040
Speaker 1: he spends time. It's like always be spinning your top.

1101
00:59:40,400 --> 00:59:42,040
Speaker 1: But that that it's it's weird. You gotta that means

1102
00:59:42,080 --> 00:59:44,200
Speaker 1: you gotta do it in the in your waking life too.

1103
00:59:44,320 --> 00:59:48,600
Speaker 1: You've got to really commit. Now. Another tactic isnemonic induction

1104
00:59:48,680 --> 00:59:51,960
Speaker 1: of lucid dreaming. And this is this one is another

1105
00:59:52,040 --> 00:59:55,240
Speaker 1: of libertas techniques. So when you wake up from a dream,

1106
00:59:55,640 --> 00:59:58,080
Speaker 1: try your best to remember it fully. So this might

1107
00:59:58,120 --> 01:00:00,760
Speaker 1: mean dream journaling, talking to somebody, just thinking over it

1108
01:00:00,800 --> 01:00:03,200
Speaker 1: with with a certain amount of intent. And then when

1109
01:00:03,240 --> 01:00:05,840
Speaker 1: you go back to sleep, keep telling yourself that you're

1110
01:00:05,840 --> 01:00:08,479
Speaker 1: going to remember that you're dreaming during your next dream.

1111
01:00:08,520 --> 01:00:10,760
Speaker 1: This is especially important if you wake up from a

1112
01:00:10,840 --> 01:00:14,160
Speaker 1: dream in the night. Yeah. In that omnips I was

1113
01:00:14,520 --> 01:00:18,240
Speaker 1: talking about earlier, he told the reporter that she should

1114
01:00:18,240 --> 01:00:20,440
Speaker 1: get up an hour earlier in the morning than she

1115
01:00:20,520 --> 01:00:24,400
Speaker 1: normally did. Uh, and then try to go back to

1116
01:00:24,520 --> 01:00:27,760
Speaker 1: sleep and remember that, you know, remember that she was

1117
01:00:27,800 --> 01:00:29,480
Speaker 1: going to sleep, and that this would help with the

1118
01:00:29,520 --> 01:00:33,320
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming and the nemonic induction. Uh. He also said

1119
01:00:33,360 --> 01:00:36,280
Speaker 1: another trick to check your dream environment is for something

1120
01:00:36,280 --> 01:00:39,520
Speaker 1: he calls dream signs and these are things that don't

1121
01:00:39,520 --> 01:00:43,000
Speaker 1: occur in real life. So flying that let's go to,

1122
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:46,120
Speaker 1: he said, flying. And then, uh, it's interesting you said

1123
01:00:46,120 --> 01:00:48,200
Speaker 1: writing on your hand this is a dream, because he

1124
01:00:48,240 --> 01:00:50,680
Speaker 1: said writing changes every time you look at it when

1125
01:00:50,720 --> 01:00:53,720
Speaker 1: you're in a dream. So he said, yeah, like write

1126
01:00:53,720 --> 01:00:56,200
Speaker 1: something down or look at some written words somewhere and

1127
01:00:56,240 --> 01:00:58,680
Speaker 1: then turn and then look back on it. If it changes,

1128
01:00:58,720 --> 01:01:02,240
Speaker 1: you're in a dream. Okay, it's uh, of course that

1129
01:01:02,240 --> 01:01:04,120
Speaker 1: that might be harder now that people were reading on

1130
01:01:04,160 --> 01:01:07,040
Speaker 1: devices more and more. Yeah, I don't want to start

1131
01:01:07,040 --> 01:01:09,240
Speaker 1: reading my kindle and then freak out and try to

1132
01:01:09,520 --> 01:01:12,800
Speaker 1: I can't lucid dream. That's the worst nightmare on an airplane.

1133
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:18,280
Speaker 1: So speaking of Leberts is like masks like the Nova

1134
01:01:18,360 --> 01:01:22,320
Speaker 1: dreamer there. This reminds me of something that happened when

1135
01:01:22,360 --> 01:01:24,880
Speaker 1: I first started working at How Stuff Works. Um. Some

1136
01:01:25,000 --> 01:01:27,280
Speaker 1: people may know I was originally the host of a

1137
01:01:27,280 --> 01:01:29,919
Speaker 1: show here called Stuff of Genius. And the first piece

1138
01:01:29,960 --> 01:01:32,640
Speaker 1: of fan mail I ever received was from a listener

1139
01:01:32,680 --> 01:01:36,400
Speaker 1: in Leeds, England. Uh, and they really wanted to know

1140
01:01:36,440 --> 01:01:39,400
Speaker 1: about something called the dream machine, and they had cut

1141
01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:42,560
Speaker 1: out a newspaper article about it. It was made by

1142
01:01:42,560 --> 01:01:44,840
Speaker 1: a guy, a guy named Keith Herne, so I decided

1143
01:01:44,880 --> 01:01:47,800
Speaker 1: to write about it and look into it. Keith Herne

1144
01:01:47,880 --> 01:01:50,520
Speaker 1: is is an interesting guy because it seems like he's

1145
01:01:50,560 --> 01:01:53,040
Speaker 1: basically taking what Leberts has done and just trying to

1146
01:01:53,080 --> 01:01:55,800
Speaker 1: pretend like Leberts doesn't exist and that he invented all

1147
01:01:55,920 --> 01:01:58,880
Speaker 1: this stuff. So he he calls himself the world's leading

1148
01:01:58,920 --> 01:02:02,120
Speaker 1: researcher and lucid dreaming. Uh. He claims that he founded

1149
01:02:02,160 --> 01:02:06,240
Speaker 1: the European College of Hypnotherapy. But here's the thing. He

1150
01:02:06,280 --> 01:02:08,200
Speaker 1: filed the patent twenty five years ago for a thing

1151
01:02:08,240 --> 01:02:11,920
Speaker 1: called the dream machine. Uh. And he he basically said, like,

1152
01:02:12,040 --> 01:02:15,200
Speaker 1: this is an apparatus that'll let you control your dreams. Uh.

1153
01:02:15,240 --> 01:02:17,160
Speaker 1: He says he's the one who came up with the

1154
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:22,200
Speaker 1: coordinated eye movement thing. Uh. And then he describes this device.

1155
01:02:22,320 --> 01:02:25,400
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, this device was never commercially available. Uh.

1156
01:02:25,440 --> 01:02:28,880
Speaker 1: It used a respiratory measuring device that monitored your breathing

1157
01:02:28,920 --> 01:02:32,120
Speaker 1: through your nose, and it combined with electrodes that would

1158
01:02:32,200 --> 01:02:35,160
Speaker 1: shock your wrists and there would be an alarm in

1159
01:02:35,200 --> 01:02:37,880
Speaker 1: there that was designed to remind the dreamer that they

1160
01:02:37,920 --> 01:02:40,280
Speaker 1: were in control. He theorized that this would help you

1161
01:02:40,360 --> 01:02:44,200
Speaker 1: to control your nightmares basically by measuring how high your

1162
01:02:44,360 --> 01:02:47,040
Speaker 1: r M breathing rate was to understand like if you

1163
01:02:47,040 --> 01:02:50,560
Speaker 1: were having an emotional dream or not. Um, I gotta

1164
01:02:50,600 --> 01:02:52,200
Speaker 1: say like, when I did the research on the piece,

1165
01:02:52,200 --> 01:02:54,160
Speaker 1: it didn't really seem like there was a ton of

1166
01:02:54,200 --> 01:02:57,680
Speaker 1: actual science there. It seemed like he'd like even at

1167
01:02:57,680 --> 01:02:59,800
Speaker 1: the time, like Libert's just kept coming up over and

1168
01:02:59,840 --> 01:03:04,360
Speaker 1: over again. Um, but the word is the Science Museum

1169
01:03:04,360 --> 01:03:08,400
Speaker 1: in London has one of these machines on display. And

1170
01:03:08,560 --> 01:03:12,840
Speaker 1: afterward Herne moved on to researching something called information therapy,

1171
01:03:12,840 --> 01:03:16,880
Speaker 1: which he was working on too, remedies sleep paralysis. Now,

1172
01:03:16,920 --> 01:03:20,440
Speaker 1: of course, there is one other way that Leberts and

1173
01:03:20,520 --> 01:03:23,640
Speaker 1: others have sort of talked about ways to influence your dreams.

1174
01:03:23,640 --> 01:03:25,480
Speaker 1: And it wouldn't be a stuft to blow your mind

1175
01:03:25,480 --> 01:03:28,520
Speaker 1: episode if we weren't talking about pharmaceuticals and how they

1176
01:03:28,560 --> 01:03:31,600
Speaker 1: could affect your dreams. That's right. One in particular that

1177
01:03:31,640 --> 01:03:35,800
Speaker 1: comes up is gallantonine, which is an Alzheimer's drug that

1178
01:03:35,920 --> 01:03:40,800
Speaker 1: the aids um you know, cognitive function and memory. Yeah,

1179
01:03:40,960 --> 01:03:44,080
Speaker 1: And at the time of that interview, Leberts and his

1180
01:03:44,160 --> 01:03:46,760
Speaker 1: crew were searching for all different kinds of drugs to

1181
01:03:46,840 --> 01:03:49,280
Speaker 1: increase the intensity of their dreams. I have to wonder

1182
01:03:49,360 --> 01:03:52,760
Speaker 1: if they uh talk to Dr Alexander Shulgun at all

1183
01:03:53,280 --> 01:03:58,320
Speaker 1: um they were testing dime methyl amino ethanol, which was

1184
01:03:58,360 --> 01:04:00,800
Speaker 1: being sold at the time as a memor re enhancer.

1185
01:04:00,840 --> 01:04:02,680
Speaker 1: I sort of remember this like you could buy it

1186
01:04:02,680 --> 01:04:05,400
Speaker 1: in like, uh, like convenience stores and stuff. I think

1187
01:04:05,400 --> 01:04:07,080
Speaker 1: you can still buy d n A. I could be

1188
01:04:07,120 --> 01:04:09,000
Speaker 1: wrong with that, right, but I feel like I've seen

1189
01:04:09,040 --> 01:04:13,040
Speaker 1: that at health food stores in the last few years. Uh.

1190
01:04:13,080 --> 01:04:15,400
Speaker 1: And and one thing I wanted to add here, so

1191
01:04:15,640 --> 01:04:18,720
Speaker 1: you know, of course, like we we mentioned earlier, there's

1192
01:04:18,720 --> 01:04:21,360
Speaker 1: people in the scientific community who don't buy lucid dreaming.

1193
01:04:21,720 --> 01:04:25,160
Speaker 1: One of the people who doesn't, which this stunned me,

1194
01:04:25,280 --> 01:04:29,520
Speaker 1: was Susan Blackmore, who wrote the Meme Machine. We've talked

1195
01:04:29,560 --> 01:04:32,240
Speaker 1: about her on the show before. She's a UM I

1196
01:04:32,240 --> 01:04:35,640
Speaker 1: guess you'd say, a student of Richard Dawkins. Uh. And

1197
01:04:35,800 --> 01:04:37,760
Speaker 1: we'll talk about this in the other episode with Dawkins

1198
01:04:37,800 --> 01:04:40,160
Speaker 1: is also like a little controversial about this stuff. He's

1199
01:04:40,240 --> 01:04:43,040
Speaker 1: he's not so sure about a lot of it. Uh.

1200
01:04:43,080 --> 01:04:45,280
Speaker 1: And she was concerned in the nineties with reports of

1201
01:04:45,320 --> 01:04:49,360
Speaker 1: lucid dreaming leading to people not being able to distinguish

1202
01:04:49,400 --> 01:04:52,360
Speaker 1: between their dreams and reality. So there seems to be

1203
01:04:52,400 --> 01:04:55,920
Speaker 1: this weird split because they're both kind of fringe e

1204
01:04:56,080 --> 01:04:59,320
Speaker 1: movements in science. But the dream theory people and the

1205
01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:02,320
Speaker 1: meme theory people don't seem to get along from what

1206
01:05:02,400 --> 01:05:06,400
Speaker 1: I can tell. Uh. And then you know, Liberts of

1207
01:05:06,440 --> 01:05:09,880
Speaker 1: course totally rejects this, And we talked to Dr Serf

1208
01:05:09,880 --> 01:05:13,360
Speaker 1: about this later on. He uh, specifically, we talked to

1209
01:05:13,440 --> 01:05:16,880
Speaker 1: him about Francis Crick, who's like he describes him as

1210
01:05:16,880 --> 01:05:19,400
Speaker 1: being like his role model, I think. Um, so we'll

1211
01:05:19,400 --> 01:05:22,080
Speaker 1: get into that with him. All right. Well, on that note,

1212
01:05:22,160 --> 01:05:25,959
Speaker 1: let's let's talk to Dr Moron Surf. Yeah. So, Dr

1213
01:05:26,000 --> 01:05:28,800
Speaker 1: Surf is a professor of neuroscience and business at the

1214
01:05:28,880 --> 01:05:33,800
Speaker 1: Kellogg School of Management and the Neuroscience Program at Northwestern University.

1215
01:05:33,880 --> 01:05:37,880
Speaker 1: His his focus is mainly on examining brain surgery patients,

1216
01:05:37,920 --> 01:05:41,240
Speaker 1: their emotions, their dreams, and their behavior. You may have

1217
01:05:41,320 --> 01:05:44,320
Speaker 1: also heard of him because in his previous life he

1218
01:05:44,400 --> 01:05:47,080
Speaker 1: used to be a hacker and his job was to

1219
01:05:47,120 --> 01:05:50,440
Speaker 1: hacken to banks and to prove that they had security

1220
01:05:50,480 --> 01:05:53,840
Speaker 1: flaws and it's perfect because what is lucid dreaming but

1221
01:05:53,920 --> 01:05:56,520
Speaker 1: the hacking of exactly. Yeah, so he kind of uses

1222
01:05:56,560 --> 01:05:59,360
Speaker 1: that metaphor. So without further ado, let's talk to Dr

1223
01:05:59,440 --> 01:06:04,240
Speaker 1: Surf that serves what is the current consensus on the

1224
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:08,600
Speaker 1: purpose of dreaming? There isn't. There are like five different

1225
01:06:08,640 --> 01:06:12,760
Speaker 1: theories that try to explain what dreams are full and

1226
01:06:12,800 --> 01:06:16,480
Speaker 1: they range from there for nothing to they're the most

1227
01:06:16,480 --> 01:06:18,880
Speaker 1: important things that our brain can do. So here's like

1228
01:06:19,000 --> 01:06:21,360
Speaker 1: the kind of layout of those. One of the theo

1229
01:06:21,600 --> 01:06:24,440
Speaker 1: is says that dreams are basically our brain's way of

1230
01:06:24,920 --> 01:06:27,560
Speaker 1: defragmenting the hard life. You kind of overnight you have

1231
01:06:27,640 --> 01:06:30,160
Speaker 1: to choose which member away is to erase, which one

1232
01:06:30,200 --> 01:06:32,600
Speaker 1: to keep, and your brains sort them out. And because

1233
01:06:32,640 --> 01:06:35,040
Speaker 1: you see the visuals if you want of those memb

1234
01:06:35,040 --> 01:06:37,760
Speaker 1: always passing by, you create a narrative of that, and

1235
01:06:37,840 --> 01:06:39,840
Speaker 1: this is what you call a dream. This has a theory.

1236
01:06:39,880 --> 01:06:41,920
Speaker 1: It says that they don't really mean much. It's just

1237
01:06:42,040 --> 01:06:44,680
Speaker 1: that they're kind of an artifact of our brain doing things.

1238
01:06:45,040 --> 01:06:47,560
Speaker 1: That's on the one explain or the other explain that

1239
01:06:47,680 --> 01:06:51,680
Speaker 1: the theory that our brain is essentially looking and fishing

1240
01:06:51,720 --> 01:06:55,320
Speaker 1: inside at things that we suppressed during the day. This

1241
01:06:55,400 --> 01:06:58,040
Speaker 1: is the Frau game theory. It said, we're kind of

1242
01:06:58,160 --> 01:07:01,600
Speaker 1: very stuff deep inside that you are not deal with it.

1243
01:07:02,040 --> 01:07:04,440
Speaker 1: And then at night, because our gods are down know,

1244
01:07:04,520 --> 01:07:08,360
Speaker 1: because our brain speaks without anyone suppressing things, we get

1245
01:07:08,360 --> 01:07:11,560
Speaker 1: exposed to things that kind of come up from from

1246
01:07:11,560 --> 01:07:14,720
Speaker 1: our psyche. A third one that's really popular right now

1247
01:07:14,720 --> 01:07:19,120
Speaker 1: that I'm supporting in many ways is one way the

1248
01:07:19,200 --> 01:07:23,600
Speaker 1: brain is using the dream to simulate futures for us

1249
01:07:23,920 --> 01:07:27,000
Speaker 1: and kind of leave to them in the ultimate virtuality,

1250
01:07:27,520 --> 01:07:29,760
Speaker 1: so we would actually know when we wake up if

1251
01:07:29,760 --> 01:07:31,640
Speaker 1: we should do the not. So the idea is that

1252
01:07:31,680 --> 01:07:34,360
Speaker 1: you're debating whether us to marry her and move to

1253
01:07:34,400 --> 01:07:37,960
Speaker 1: Alabama or break up and decide to start a campaign

1254
01:07:37,960 --> 01:07:40,120
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, and you really don't know what to do.

1255
01:07:40,440 --> 01:07:44,400
Speaker 1: So overnight your brain plays both movies of you moving

1256
01:07:44,400 --> 01:07:46,960
Speaker 1: to Alabama with her and you started the company in

1257
01:07:46,960 --> 01:07:51,400
Speaker 1: San Francisco. And because it's such a cool virtuality with

1258
01:07:51,480 --> 01:07:54,360
Speaker 1: the brain, they doesn't know that it's not really going

1259
01:07:54,400 --> 01:07:57,320
Speaker 1: to the experience. You filter all of this movie through

1260
01:07:57,320 --> 01:08:00,320
Speaker 1: your values and emotions, and when you wake up, even

1261
01:08:00,360 --> 01:08:03,120
Speaker 1: though the memory itself is lost and you have no

1262
01:08:03,360 --> 01:08:06,840
Speaker 1: collection of the dream. What survives is the feeling towards

1263
01:08:06,840 --> 01:08:08,520
Speaker 1: those choices, so when you wake up, you kind of

1264
01:08:08,560 --> 01:08:10,960
Speaker 1: have a better answer to what you should do. So

1265
01:08:10,960 --> 01:08:13,960
Speaker 1: those are three t o is. There's two more along

1266
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:16,080
Speaker 1: the same lines, but they cannot fall into those packets.

1267
01:08:16,439 --> 01:08:18,839
Speaker 1: They mean nothing, but they're just our brains way of working.

1268
01:08:19,280 --> 01:08:21,640
Speaker 1: They mean a lot because there are brains way of

1269
01:08:22,400 --> 01:08:25,439
Speaker 1: reflecting things that we are self suppressed, and they are

1270
01:08:25,560 --> 01:08:28,280
Speaker 1: are brains way of stimulating futures that we didn't experience

1271
01:08:28,360 --> 01:08:33,680
Speaker 1: yet in an ultimate rutuality device. That's so amazing that

1272
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:36,000
Speaker 1: we are fooled by it ourselves, thinking that we are

1273
01:08:36,040 --> 01:08:38,600
Speaker 1: the character in this movie and then waking up and

1274
01:08:38,640 --> 01:08:41,439
Speaker 1: knowing what to do. So this really sounds like something

1275
01:08:41,439 --> 01:08:44,760
Speaker 1: that sciences is really still trying to nail down. And

1276
01:08:44,920 --> 01:08:48,479
Speaker 1: that brings me to the main topic of this episode

1277
01:08:48,479 --> 01:08:52,400
Speaker 1: that we we covered, which is lucid dreaming. And lucid

1278
01:08:52,479 --> 01:08:56,639
Speaker 1: dreaming seems like it's even less scientifically grounded. So can

1279
01:08:56,720 --> 01:08:58,640
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about that, and if we

1280
01:08:58,720 --> 01:09:03,000
Speaker 1: achieve lucid dream naming, is this breaking the system in

1281
01:09:03,040 --> 01:09:05,200
Speaker 1: some sort of way of those those various theories that

1282
01:09:05,240 --> 01:09:09,000
Speaker 1: you just presented to us. Yes. So so what's cool

1283
01:09:09,040 --> 01:09:11,960
Speaker 1: about lucy dreaming is that it's kind of bridges this

1284
01:09:12,000 --> 01:09:15,600
Speaker 1: one problem that scientists have we studying dreams, and that

1285
01:09:15,800 --> 01:09:18,559
Speaker 1: is that most of the times we cannot really ask

1286
01:09:18,600 --> 01:09:20,680
Speaker 1: you anything or dreams because you awake when you tell

1287
01:09:20,760 --> 01:09:22,880
Speaker 1: us the story and you're no longer in the dream.

1288
01:09:22,960 --> 01:09:24,720
Speaker 1: So this is like the one study that because we

1289
01:09:24,920 --> 01:09:26,479
Speaker 1: do because we want to see you when you're in

1290
01:09:26,479 --> 01:09:29,080
Speaker 1: your dream, but when you wake up, you're not going there.

1291
01:09:29,120 --> 01:09:31,760
Speaker 1: So whatever we ask you is gonna be you reflecting

1292
01:09:31,800 --> 01:09:33,720
Speaker 1: on some residues that you have, and we're going to

1293
01:09:33,800 --> 01:09:36,160
Speaker 1: be lost in that. So scientists have been looking for

1294
01:09:36,240 --> 01:09:38,680
Speaker 1: a while at people's report on dreams and use that,

1295
01:09:38,800 --> 01:09:40,760
Speaker 1: but we know that those are kind of flawed in

1296
01:09:40,800 --> 01:09:43,519
Speaker 1: many ways. Now there's a way to look at dreams

1297
01:09:43,520 --> 01:09:45,920
Speaker 1: when the person is still asleep, using techniques that allow

1298
01:09:45,960 --> 01:09:48,280
Speaker 1: you to sneak into the brain and look what's going

1299
01:09:48,320 --> 01:09:51,519
Speaker 1: on there even though you're asleep. But lucy dreamers are

1300
01:09:51,600 --> 01:09:54,679
Speaker 1: the exact kind of group that allows us to do both.

1301
01:09:55,160 --> 01:09:57,800
Speaker 1: There's a person who's dreaming and a sleep and he

1302
01:09:58,040 --> 01:10:00,679
Speaker 1: or she is able to somehow signals to outside world

1303
01:10:00,840 --> 01:10:04,840
Speaker 1: what they're going through and that's a remarkable thing. What

1304
01:10:05,400 --> 01:10:08,160
Speaker 1: come out comes out of that a lot of results

1305
01:10:08,240 --> 01:10:10,519
Speaker 1: that show us something that we were baffled by for

1306
01:10:10,560 --> 01:10:12,599
Speaker 1: a while, and we can now ask the lucy blimer

1307
01:10:12,760 --> 01:10:15,759
Speaker 1: to basically tell us. So youre an example. For a while,

1308
01:10:15,960 --> 01:10:19,280
Speaker 1: there was a question that people asked whether time in

1309
01:10:19,360 --> 01:10:23,400
Speaker 1: dreams is similar to time in reality, as in, do

1310
01:10:23,600 --> 01:10:26,120
Speaker 1: twenty seconds in your dream amount of twenty seconds in

1311
01:10:26,240 --> 01:10:28,639
Speaker 1: your awake world, or maybe time in dreams that much

1312
01:10:29,320 --> 01:10:32,120
Speaker 1: is much faster or it's much slower. We didn't know

1313
01:10:32,160 --> 01:10:35,320
Speaker 1: the answer. Lucy blimers could actually answer that because what

1314
01:10:35,520 --> 01:10:39,639
Speaker 1: was one of the famous scientists that studied the blooming

1315
01:10:39,800 --> 01:10:43,080
Speaker 1: did was he trained a luci blimer to basically signal

1316
01:10:43,520 --> 01:10:46,960
Speaker 1: to the outside world that he or she are starting

1317
01:10:47,160 --> 01:10:50,000
Speaker 1: their dream. So when they get to the dream, even

1318
01:10:50,000 --> 01:10:51,960
Speaker 1: though the eyes are closed, they're able to kind of

1319
01:10:51,960 --> 01:10:54,200
Speaker 1: move their eyes a little bit up, down, left, right, up,

1320
01:10:54,200 --> 01:10:56,680
Speaker 1: down left, fright in a sequence that was a term

1321
01:10:56,720 --> 01:11:00,880
Speaker 1: india advance. And this told the scientists that the person

1322
01:11:01,000 --> 01:11:04,360
Speaker 1: right now is starting to do something in their agreement

1323
01:11:04,400 --> 01:11:07,320
Speaker 1: that are in control of the narlative. And then he

1324
01:11:07,400 --> 01:11:10,520
Speaker 1: told them in your dream counts from one to twenty

1325
01:11:10,640 --> 01:11:12,599
Speaker 1: and when you get there and move your eyes again

1326
01:11:12,600 --> 01:11:13,880
Speaker 1: in the same pattern, so I would know that you

1327
01:11:13,920 --> 01:11:15,800
Speaker 1: get to twenty. So they kind of took time and

1328
01:11:15,800 --> 01:11:17,639
Speaker 1: measured how long it takes them to count for months

1329
01:11:17,680 --> 01:11:19,960
Speaker 1: twenty in their dream. Then you woke them up and

1330
01:11:20,000 --> 01:11:21,479
Speaker 1: head them to the same thing when they're awake, and

1331
01:11:21,520 --> 01:11:23,519
Speaker 1: they could compare the numbers, and finally we had the

1332
01:11:23,560 --> 01:11:26,720
Speaker 1: answer that time in dreams is actually one to one

1333
01:11:26,760 --> 01:11:29,040
Speaker 1: map to time in reality. So it took them exactly

1334
01:11:29,080 --> 01:11:31,280
Speaker 1: the same time to count to twenty when they're streaming

1335
01:11:31,320 --> 01:11:33,479
Speaker 1: and when they're awake. But this is the only way

1336
01:11:33,479 --> 01:11:36,240
Speaker 1: we could give the answer to death because if I

1337
01:11:36,280 --> 01:11:38,080
Speaker 1: ask you, you all of the other dream but Loten

1338
01:11:38,120 --> 01:11:39,840
Speaker 1: dreamers are the ones that can actually tell me I'm

1339
01:11:39,880 --> 01:11:45,679
Speaker 1: counting right now while being asleep, monitor me decart dreaming.

1340
01:11:45,800 --> 01:11:48,880
Speaker 1: Why is Lucia dreaming so difficult for many of us

1341
01:11:49,760 --> 01:11:52,320
Speaker 1: because we don't really know exactly how to get there,

1342
01:11:52,680 --> 01:11:56,360
Speaker 1: and it seems that it's kind of breaks the bailure

1343
01:11:56,479 --> 01:11:59,160
Speaker 1: that our brain created for dreams. So there's a reason

1344
01:11:59,240 --> 01:12:03,000
Speaker 1: that our brain keep streams in one compartment if you want,

1345
01:12:03,080 --> 01:12:06,360
Speaker 1: and keeps the awake state in a different one for

1346
01:12:06,439 --> 01:12:09,400
Speaker 1: the same sake. We forget our dreams most of the

1347
01:12:09,439 --> 01:12:11,559
Speaker 1: times when we wake up, because our brain really wants

1348
01:12:11,600 --> 01:12:15,439
Speaker 1: to separate the awake world from the dream world, because

1349
01:12:15,439 --> 01:12:18,760
Speaker 1: there are different systems that compositionalized and operate there. And

1350
01:12:18,800 --> 01:12:20,479
Speaker 1: also because the brain wants to make sure that we

1351
01:12:20,520 --> 01:12:24,360
Speaker 1: won't mistake any of the dreams for real memories, so

1352
01:12:24,400 --> 01:12:26,679
Speaker 1: we won't wake up and think that we just score

1353
01:12:26,640 --> 01:12:29,000
Speaker 1: a touch down in the NFL. The brain has this

1354
01:12:29,080 --> 01:12:32,280
Speaker 1: mechanism for that. And now now you can think, okay, well,

1355
01:12:32,280 --> 01:12:34,559
Speaker 1: what if a Lucy Damer really kind of breaks the

1356
01:12:34,600 --> 01:12:36,920
Speaker 1: barrier and now memories that are better than the dream

1357
01:12:37,240 --> 01:12:41,040
Speaker 1: become his or her real memories and when they wake up,

1358
01:12:41,080 --> 01:12:43,040
Speaker 1: they don't know anymore didn't really happen or not. We

1359
01:12:43,040 --> 01:12:44,760
Speaker 1: already have that. We always have people waking up and

1360
01:12:44,800 --> 01:12:48,679
Speaker 1: really not being sure if what they remember is something

1361
01:12:48,720 --> 01:12:51,000
Speaker 1: that they just dreamt or was it reality lost. The

1362
01:12:51,080 --> 01:12:53,600
Speaker 1: damers are kind of breaking the barriers so much that

1363
01:12:53,640 --> 01:12:55,760
Speaker 1: they really can wake up and not know anymore, and

1364
01:12:55,800 --> 01:12:58,040
Speaker 1: that's part of their problem, and that that's something that

1365
01:12:58,200 --> 01:13:01,439
Speaker 1: the brains doesn't really want us to do. That kind

1366
01:13:01,439 --> 01:13:05,840
Speaker 1: of define the rules of dream So I've read that

1367
01:13:05,920 --> 01:13:09,439
Speaker 1: you are very heavily influenced by Francis Crick, and in

1368
01:13:09,520 --> 01:13:12,320
Speaker 1: our research for this episode, we actually found something. It

1369
01:13:12,400 --> 01:13:15,360
Speaker 1: came up that Cricks speculated that we need to dream

1370
01:13:15,360 --> 01:13:18,479
Speaker 1: on a regular basis so that our brains can shed

1371
01:13:18,600 --> 01:13:21,120
Speaker 1: memories and not be overloaded the data, kind of going

1372
01:13:21,160 --> 01:13:24,000
Speaker 1: back to that defragmenting the hard drive theory we were

1373
01:13:24,000 --> 01:13:27,479
Speaker 1: talking about earlier. He also indicated that he was worried

1374
01:13:27,520 --> 01:13:31,080
Speaker 1: that the recalling dreams too much, or or maybe lucid dreaming,

1375
01:13:31,360 --> 01:13:35,400
Speaker 1: could lead to mental instability. What's our understanding of these

1376
01:13:35,439 --> 01:13:40,760
Speaker 1: theories today is this? Do you think Cricks cricks ideas

1377
01:13:40,800 --> 01:13:44,040
Speaker 1: about understanding our dreams too much? Are Are we seeing

1378
01:13:44,040 --> 01:13:48,240
Speaker 1: more of that today? Absolutely? So so so dreaming My

1379
01:13:48,320 --> 01:13:52,720
Speaker 1: academic godfather, and you know, the inspiration to many our scientists.

1380
01:13:52,800 --> 01:13:55,280
Speaker 1: He had indeed a theory, one of the kind of

1381
01:13:55,280 --> 01:13:58,200
Speaker 1: five theories of dreams was he and he suggested that

1382
01:13:58,280 --> 01:14:01,320
Speaker 1: you basically we dream to forget. And the idea is

1383
01:14:01,360 --> 01:14:03,880
Speaker 1: that if you think about that is a kind of

1384
01:14:03,880 --> 01:14:07,160
Speaker 1: hard ive. We collect a lot of information during the day,

1385
01:14:07,280 --> 01:14:09,479
Speaker 1: and how that gets full of a lot of things.

1386
01:14:09,479 --> 01:14:12,479
Speaker 1: People we met phone numbers. We were asked to remember

1387
01:14:12,640 --> 01:14:14,840
Speaker 1: details that we learned. All of that is in our brain,

1388
01:14:15,160 --> 01:14:17,280
Speaker 1: and we can't just tell all of that. There's too

1389
01:14:17,360 --> 01:14:19,639
Speaker 1: much out there. So there's need to be at time

1390
01:14:19,800 --> 01:14:23,120
Speaker 1: where the brain picks the twelve, twenty fifty important things

1391
01:14:23,200 --> 01:14:26,120
Speaker 1: and strengthen them and takes the other that doesn't care

1392
01:14:26,160 --> 01:14:28,400
Speaker 1: about and trying to suppress them, so they either gets

1393
01:14:28,400 --> 01:14:30,720
Speaker 1: forgotten entirely or at least move to a place where

1394
01:14:30,720 --> 01:14:35,280
Speaker 1: they're less likely to be, you know, used often. What

1395
01:14:35,439 --> 01:14:39,320
Speaker 1: Francis suggested is that this happened overnight, even actually not

1396
01:14:39,600 --> 01:14:42,599
Speaker 1: overnight entirely, but in a specific window during the night.

1397
01:14:42,800 --> 01:14:45,200
Speaker 1: That the state that people think is the moment where

1398
01:14:45,280 --> 01:14:48,600
Speaker 1: dreams happen, and that what we call the dream is

1399
01:14:48,640 --> 01:14:51,920
Speaker 1: our memory really moving things from one place to another.

1400
01:14:52,160 --> 01:14:53,640
Speaker 1: And we just see the memory of the things that

1401
01:14:53,680 --> 01:14:55,760
Speaker 1: we have to forget kind of floating in our brain,

1402
01:14:55,960 --> 01:14:58,080
Speaker 1: and our brain weaves it into a story. So we

1403
01:14:58,120 --> 01:14:59,920
Speaker 1: see the number that we don't really want to remember

1404
01:15:00,160 --> 01:15:02,559
Speaker 1: moving from the left to the right, and it puts

1405
01:15:02,560 --> 01:15:04,800
Speaker 1: it into a story, and it's is this person that

1406
01:15:04,960 --> 01:15:07,439
Speaker 1: we didn't really want to remember, and her name is

1407
01:15:07,479 --> 01:15:09,760
Speaker 1: just about to be forgotten. Kind of coming up on

1408
01:15:09,880 --> 01:15:11,840
Speaker 1: left to right, and we attached it and we said, okay,

1409
01:15:11,880 --> 01:15:13,400
Speaker 1: this is a woman, and you hear the phone number,

1410
01:15:13,479 --> 01:15:15,880
Speaker 1: and we may make a story basically for the things

1411
01:15:15,880 --> 01:15:20,400
Speaker 1: that our brain is kind of slowly getting readied. Alright,

1412
01:15:20,400 --> 01:15:22,559
Speaker 1: soday you have at the nine dream Worlds of Frederick

1413
01:15:22,640 --> 01:15:26,160
Speaker 1: van Eden, Lucid Dreaming and uh and and the the

1414
01:15:26,240 --> 01:15:30,800
Speaker 1: Science of Lucid Dreaming. Yeah, so we've we've unpacked a

1415
01:15:30,920 --> 01:15:33,280
Speaker 1: lot in this episode. There's a lot going on with dreams.

1416
01:15:33,600 --> 01:15:36,559
Speaker 1: And maybe you will listen to our other episode on

1417
01:15:36,640 --> 01:15:39,680
Speaker 1: collective unconsciousness. I want to know from you have you

1418
01:15:39,720 --> 01:15:42,960
Speaker 1: experienced these type of dreams, all nine of them? Did

1419
01:15:43,040 --> 01:15:46,160
Speaker 1: you do you buy? And the Van Eden's demon theory

1420
01:15:46,439 --> 01:15:49,200
Speaker 1: all this stuff and let us know the best ways

1421
01:15:49,240 --> 01:15:51,280
Speaker 1: to do that. We are all over social media. You

1422
01:15:51,320 --> 01:15:54,120
Speaker 1: can get in touch with us on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler.

1423
01:15:54,160 --> 01:15:57,599
Speaker 1: We're also on Instagram. Yeah, head on over the Stuff

1424
01:15:57,640 --> 01:15:59,639
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com as well. That's our

1425
01:15:59,680 --> 01:16:02,880
Speaker 1: webs I. That's the mothership and it's recently received a

1426
01:16:02,920 --> 01:16:05,600
Speaker 1: wonderful new redesign. It looks it looks great. Come and

1427
01:16:05,680 --> 01:16:07,160
Speaker 1: check it out because that's where you'll find all the

1428
01:16:07,200 --> 01:16:10,600
Speaker 1: podcast episodes. You'll find blogs, videos, and links out to

1429
01:16:10,640 --> 01:16:12,519
Speaker 1: those social media accounts, and if you want to just

1430
01:16:12,560 --> 01:16:14,559
Speaker 1: write us the old fashioned way, you can always get

1431
01:16:14,600 --> 01:16:17,040
Speaker 1: at us at low the Mind at how stuff works

1432
01:16:17,120 --> 01:16:30,160
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

1433
01:16:30,400 --> 01:16:54,600
Speaker 1: is that how stuff works dot com